


Crevices: Refrain of a Soul

by coppertears



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, supernatural!AU, w: minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 15:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7227943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coppertears/pseuds/coppertears
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He finds him in between the folds of reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from the fic exchange, thebaekfest.

  
**Crevices: Refrain of a Soul**  
Baekhyun/Baekhyun  
PG-13  
w: character death

Written for [](http://saphirediva.livejournal.com/profile)[**saphirediva**](http://saphirediva.livejournal.com/) for [](http://thebaekfest.livejournal.com/profile)[**thebaekfest**](http://thebaekfest.livejournal.com/) exchange. I owe [](http://uponinfinity.livejournal.com/profile)[**uponinfinity**](http://uponinfinity.livejournal.com/) for getting me through this until the end.

The phone rings in the middle of a summer evening sticky with heat, and Baekhyun hears it all the way from his work table. Pinned to his cork board are swatches of fabric and color charts, and his eyes glance from his sewing machine to salmon pink silk, before pushing back his chair. He glares at the aircon sputtering out rare bursts of cold air before kicking open the door.

 

 

His mother answers the call first.

 

 

Baekhyun stares at the thin, sharp lines of her form bent against the wall with the headset pressed against the side of her face. A sigh escapes his lips. He lingers in the hallway with the weight of not wanting to agonize over another blasted seam and the zipper that keeps coming apart. His mother turns around and sees him, and worry makes her face resemble a crumpled piece of paper, and her slim hand beckons him to come forward. _Call your father,_ she mouths.

 

 

She’s upset -- he can tell it from the way her eyes are a bit too bright and her lips are molded into a frown pushed back by sheer will. He does as she says and leaves his parents there in the hallway, footsteps fading back to his own room.

 

 

He wonders what’s wrong and what the call is for, but he has a dress to make. Baekhyun falls right back into the rhythm of needle and thread, and thoughts about the call flicker into non-existence, and the swatches glimmer under the fluorescent lights.

 

 

÷

  
  
  
  
He wakes up in the back of the car with his limbs still in pajamas and his hair a nest of thread and maybe safety pins. His older brother is draped over a backpack and a suitcase, and he seems to be in no hurry to yawn awake anytime soon. Baekhyun scratches his neck and shifts his joints into a more comfortable seating position. Scenery darts past. Confusion slips through his fingers.  
  
  
  
“Where are we going?” he croaks out, voice coming out rusty. He winces and tries to untangle the spool of red cotton-wool blend from his hair.  
  
  
  
“Your grandmother’s house,” his father says. He’s up there in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel and feet on the pedals, and he glances at Baekhyun through the rearview mirror. “She’s ill, so we’re going to help take care of her.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun presses his cheek against the window, ignoring the way his head thumps a bit on the tempered glass every time the car hits a bump in the road. All he remembers about his grandmother are wisps of vanilla-scented smoke rising from candles and soft, wrinkled skin and piping-hot cookies on days when he’s been a good boy. The last time he’d visited her feels almost like a century ago, though in actuality it’s only been a little over five years. Still he has glimpses of the sea in his memories -- snapshots of an old, elegant manor resting on a hill, cascading downwards to wrought iron gates and sand and miles of water; of the breeze tasting salty on his tongue, and the sun painting his skin a delicate shade of red.  
  
  
  
He remembers his grandmother’s steady steps and the way her throaty voice had spun the very air she breathed into songs more beautiful than anything Baekhyun had ever heard. She’d taught him every single note rising and falling on lines of musical staff, tapping rhythm on the back of his hand and taught him never to need a metronome, until fugues and symphonies and concertos were burned into the backs of his eyelids. In return, he’d chosen to pursue a degree in fashion.  
  
  
  
Sometimes, he finds himself spread out on the bed with melodies overflowing in his mind. Baekhyun likes music, has grown up with it, has inhaled it every second of his life. But he’d fallen in love with something else somewhere along the way, and there are times when he finds himself wondering how different things would have been.  
  
  
  
He shakes off the thoughts and looks down at his needle-nicked hands. Perhaps he still has some lingering affection left for emotions buried in music, but for now his consciousness comes alive with color wheels and expert stitching.  
  
  
  
Up front, his mother reaches out to turn on the radio. Baekhyun lets his eyes flutter shut.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
They arrive at his grandmother’s manor a little past eight in the morning, and as Baekhyun stumbles out of the car with eyes half-blurred by sleep, he’s hit by the familiar scent of brine. His brother runs into him and Baekhyun only just maintains his balance.  
  
  
  
“Help us get the suitcases out,” his mother says, walking past the two of them with several boxes in her arms. Baekhyun blinks at her, then at his brother’s sleepy form, then at the luggage that his father’s unloading from the trunk.  
  
  
  
He frowns. “How long are we staying here? We brought a lot of things.”  
  
  
  
“I don’t know,” his mother says. She purses her lips and worry runs down the curves of her face. “We’re staying until your grandmother gets better.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun opens his mouth then closes it. There’s something in his mind, something that needs to be said, something that’s very much like _But what if she doesn’t?_ He catches himself just in time and turns to help his father. His brother’s a dead weight by now, clutching onto the door handle for support, eyes foggy with the haze of dreams.  
  
  
  
The caretaker rushes down to help them the moment they start straggling toward the manor’s patio. Baekhyun thinks he should be self-conscious about walking around in pajamas with bunnies on them, especially since he’s majoring in fashion, but right now he’s just a robot. He wants to bring in all of their belongings and maybe plop down on a soft mattress with nice springs so he can bounce off of it, and he rolls in the suitcases with a sigh.  
  
  
  
He stands in the living room as everyone else rushes about: His father’s still bringing in more things, his mother’s rushed upstairs to his grandmother’s bedroom, the caretaker’s struggling under the weight of a vase which Baekhyun thinks has no business being here, and his brother’s slumped over the couch with his backpack slipping down to the floor. It feels a little emptier than usual, a little sadder -- a little like the sun hasn’t peeled back the curtains like it used to and filled the place with warmth. It’s far, far different from the images in Baekhyun’s head.  
  
  
  
He almost doesn’t register the house help now spilling into the living room, fussing around with the suitcases and taking them to different rooms. Baekhyun sees one of them prop his brother up in a more comfortable position, tucking a pillow in his arms.  
  
  
  
“Where’s grandmother?” he asks, and the question is directed to his father but it’s one of the maids who answers.  
  
  
  
“In the master bedroom, like always,” she says.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun looks at his father, who nods, and then he’s climbing up the stairs. Of course his grandmother’s in the master bedroom, surrounded by shelves upon shelves of musical sheets, violins gleaming behind display cases. The master bedroom, where portraits of her and her husband hang on the right side, facing the windows so that _We can always see the light, Baekhyun._  
  
  
  
He pushes open the door.  
  
  
  
It’s silent, more silent than Baekhyun’s ever known it to be. His grandmother once told him that there was music in silence, a beat existing beneath the quiet surroundings, a melody threaded through the the things that are always left unsaid. She’d told him that it was okay to let words die once in a while, whenever he’d rushed through rests and pauses faster than they were supposed to be played.  
  
  
  
Five years later, the absence of sound still unsettles him.  
  
  
  
His mother’s pulled up a chair and is sitting by the bedside, her expression unreadable and her hands folded on her lap.  
  
  
  
“Did they tell you what the problem was?” Baekhyun asks, coming over to stand beside her.  
  
  
  
She shakes her head. “It’s just...age,” she says. “She’s getting old. Her body’s not the same anymore.” She reaches out and rests her hand on his grandmother’s arm. “You should go unpack your things.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun hesitates, looking down at his grandmother. There is white braided into her once-lustrous black hair. Her face is creased with paper-thin frowns, fine wrinkles and slashes of time. Her chest rises and falls. Baekhyun remembers her singing him a lullaby whenever he’d had difficulty sleeping as a child, and right now he wants to play that for her.  
  
  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
  
  
His mother nods. “Yes, I’m sure. Go on, now. She’ll be awake later, I’m sure, and you’ll get to talk to her.”  
  
  
  
He lingers for one more second, one more breath. And then he’s exiting the room and going back down the stairs, every footfall echoing empty _staccato_ in such a huge manor. Baekbeom is still passed out on the couch, Baekhyun’s father is going through their luggage, and the househelp are fluttering about.  
  
  
  
“Do you need help with anything?” Baekhyun asks, crouching next to a red suitcase.  
  
  
  
“It’s fine,” his father says. “You can go up if you want to, though. Your room is the third one on the left, the one where you used to sleep whenever we visited. Do you remember?”  
  
  
  
Images of blue-gray curtains and a boarded-up fireplace flash in muted frame-by-frames in Baekhyun’s mind. He thinks of beds with maroon comforters that pull you in deeper, of a piano shrouded in crochet lace and dust and neglect, of locked cabinets and thick carpets. “Yeah, I do.”  
  
  
  
He picks up his bags and shoos away any of the housemaids coming to help him. Baekhyun wanders through the corridors of the second floor, and as he passes by each closed door, it’s as if there is a sunlit-drenched version of himself running past. He used to play here, amazed by the sheer size of everything and peeking inside rooms.  
  
  
  
He stops in front of his assigned bedroom.  
  
  
  
It’s been years since he’s last been here, and nostalgia creeps its way in the way it does when Baekhyun lets all his guards fall, broken, to the ground. He rests his palm on the knob for a while, trying to replicate the feeling of being eight years old and unable to reach the knob without tiptoeing. Then he’s pushing the door open, and the scent of old things hits him, and Baekhyun stands in the doorway. Everything looks the same, and yet everything seems to have changed. He places his bags on a spot near the desk and then he’s flopping, back first, on the bed.  
  
  
  
He rolls over and turns his head to the side, where the piano stands.  
  
  
  
Even throughout the entire time that his grandmother had taught him how to play, Baekhyun had never been allowed to use this particular instrument. It had always been locked up and tucked beneath folds of cloth. He used to think it was some kind of magic piano, that maybe it was broken, and it was better that his grandmother trained him to play _her_ piano instead.  
  
  
  
Now he thinks it’s just another object aging with all the weight of tunes that have never been sung. He brings his hands up and stares at them, at the maroon bleeding through the spaces in his fingers from the bed’s canopy. Baekhyun sighs.  
  
  
  
He wonders if, after all this time, he can still read music sheets and understand what they mean in a language that’s never needed words.  
  
  
  
It’s different from fashion. It’s different, because though the medium of sound comes in the form of an instrument and is tangible, music itself isn’t. It is not as concrete as back panelings and hidden seams, as substantial as silk and linen and cotton and wool. Baekhyun can go up and down the scales and still not know why octaves come out the way they do, but he can understand fabric. He can interpret every twist and turn of expert stitching and come away burdened by new techniques.  
  
  
  
Maybe it had been less about wanting to veer from tradition, from what he’d grown up with. Maybe it had been more about the comfort of knowing what exactly you are working with, that if you did things a certain way, there would be consistency.  
  
  
  
He sighs and grabs the nearest pillow, and decides to go to sleep in order to stop the thoughts waging a war in his head.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
_Darkness flakes into blacks and grays and dark blues when he so much as breathes in the room. He touches the desk and his fingers look like they are covered in soot, the tint coming apart when he rubs his palms together. Every move, he finds out, is delayed by a millisecond. He’s not sure if his feet are on the ground anymore. He’s not sure if they should even be.  
  
  
  
Sunlight dances through the spaces between the curtains, settling on patches of wall and ceiling and floor in bursts of white. There are too many shadows it cannot drive away. Baekhyun is head under in oblivion, hidden from sight and tucked away in a corner. He raises a hand and places it on his chest, waiting for the heartbeat that thumps a tad slower than it normally does. He wonders if this is a nightmare, the kind that snaps you up and swallows you whole, until you are unable to escape.  
  
  
  
Something shifts in the periphery of his vision, breaking away from the blank space that the room has become. At first it is hard to pin down, difficult to name and assign a form to -- it is a blend of light and darkness, bridging the gap between transparency and opacity. The shape wavers, changes, movements sluggish and uncertain. It stumbles to the window, unraveling and then gathering itself close.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun blinks, and it becomes a human figure. A charcoal sketch, wobbling just the tiniest bit as it leans its head with indecipherable features against the glass. Its hands tap out a nameless, silent beat that tiptoes toward Baekhyun and then brushes past him.  
  
  
  
It’s not even cold, but he shivers.  
  
  
  
He takes a step forward, disturbing the shadows wrapping themselves around his ankles. Somewhere in the distance, Baekhyun can hear a faint melody playing, but it sounds too far away for him to fully grasp it. He lifts his hand, points it toward the figure -- his lips part and his breaths come quick -- his feet take five, six more steps forward --  
  
  
  
Light pierces the silhouette, cutting it up into bits and pieces that tumble back to the shadows._  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
“Baekhyun?”  
  
  
  
He jolts awake at his name being called, blinking up at the slope of his brother’s chin and the threadbare eyelashes fluttering down at him. Fatigue is etched into Baekbeom’s features, a chicken scrawl mess that leaves him only just coherent enough to fight back a yawn.  
  
  
  
“What is it?” he asks, hand running through his hair and tension gathering in his shoulders. His watch tells him it’s 5 pm now, and the familiar orange hues of sunset are turning the red brocade of the drapings into flames.  
  
  
  
“We need to come down,” his brother says. “It’s dinner time.” Without looking back to see if his younger brother is following, Baekbeom pivots on his foot and turns, walking straight out of the bedroom. Baekhyun is left to press his forehead against his knees, a strange feeling working its way up his toes. He dreamed of something, he knows -- something vivid and startling and confusing. Trying to hold on to it is fruitless, aimless, and he’s grasping for the tattered edges of a thing that he won’t ever be able to catch.  
  
  
  
He groans and tumbles out of bed. He’s still in his sleep pajamas, sweat salty on his skin, but he decides to shower after dinner. His parents don’t like it when he’s late to the table. _It’s rude to make food wait_ , he can almost hear his mother say.  
  
  
  
They settle at the table, all four of them, and Baekhyun is too hesitant to ask after his grandmother. Baekbeom is drifting off even though he’s sitting right across Baekhyun, head tilting just the tiniest bit to the right, eyes unfocused. His father sips his coffee. Beside Baekhyun, his mother is a shade paler and her skin is crowded with lines of worry, her shaking knuckles betraying her fatigue. Baekhyun looks down as he swallows his soup.  
  
  
  
Baekbeom leans back in his chair and asks, “How long are we staying here?” A yawn flits off from his mouth.  
  
  
  
“Three months, maybe four,” his mother says. “We’ll wait until your grandmother gets better.”  
  
  
  
_Or gets worse_ , Baekhyun tacks on. His mother doesn’t say it but the implication hovers over them. The rice tastes a lot like cardboard now; the juice isn’t enough to sweeten the bitterness of the bile rising in Baekhyun’s throat. He forces them down anyway.  
  
  
  
When dinner is over, the house help swoop in before Baekhyun’s father can so much as tell his sons to clear the table. They stand there for a few minutes, not quite sure what to do, and then their gazes intersect. Baekbeom stumbles off to the couch and slumps down the cushions, body bent in awkward angles. Baekhyun follows his mother up to his grandmother’s room, while his father totters off to turn on the television.  
  
  
  
His grandmother is sitting up on her bed when they enter, vein-riddled hands gripping the comforter. Her hair looks as if it’s just been brushed, and though she seems to drown in the size of her bed, her brown eyes are clear and determined. Baekhyun lingers by the doorway while his mother goes to sit by the bedside, murmurs of _Mother, you’re awake_ trailing after her.  
  
  
  
“Come closer, Baekhyunnie,” his grandmother says. Baekhyun hesitates, watches the soft downturn of her lips, takes in the brief sparks catching in her eyes. Her eyebrows knit together and she pats a spot beside her, more insistent this time. “Come _here_.”  
  
  
  
His mother looks back at him and nods. Baekhyun walks toward them and sits on the edge of the bed, near his grandmother’s feet. She glances at him then at the spot she’d indicated before. She doesn’t press it, though.  
  
  
  
“How are you?” she rasps out, and Baekhyun’s not sure if he’s the one she’s asking. Her gaze seems fixated on a point between her grandson and her daughter.  
  
  
  
“Fine, mother,” Baekhyun’s mother says. She reaches out to take her mother’s hand. “We’re all doing really well. But what about you? The doctor said --”  
  
  
  
“I’m not going to die,” Baekhyun’s grandmother interrupts. “Not yet, Sojin, so you can stop looking at me like you are about to lose me.”  
  
  
  
His mother flinches and looks away. Baekhyun is snared in his grandmother’s vision now, the only focus point left between the two of them, and for some reason he’s nervous. There is a strange intensity building in the room and it’s coiled around his neck, growing tighter and tighter even though he’s trying to keep his breathing steady.  
  
  
  
“What about you, young man?” his grandmother asks. “How are your studies going?”  
  
  
  
“I’ve been well, grandmother,” he says. His voice is rough sandpaper caressing wood. “I’m graduating in a couple of years, and I’ve been invited to showcase my designs in a fashion show that the university is holding.”  
  
  
  
His grandmother squints at him. “And what about music? The piano?”  
  
  
  
“I - I don’t play the piano anymore, grandmother,” Baekhyun stutters. The planes of his grandmother’s face seem harsher, her cheekbones jutting out bone-white against her skin. She looks as if she’s barely been put together, loose ends fraying and ready to break at any moment.  
  
  
  
But her spine is stiff and her head held high, and there is something like defiance in the way her lips are set. “Why not?” she asks.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun’s mother steps in then, tone gentle as she says, “Mother, Baekhyun is pursuing a different field now. He has no time left to devote to music.”  
  
  
  
His grandmother snorts. “Nonsense. There is always time for music! In fact, Sojin, there is always time for everything as long as you don’t squander the minutes you have been given. Baekhyunnie, that is no excuse. Playing the piano is a skill you might need in the future, and even if it doesn’t have anything to do with fashion, it’s still something worth cultivating. Or are you telling me that all those years I’ve spent drilling you are all just going to waste?”  
  
  
  
“Of course not, grandmother,” he says, crumpling beneath her stare. “I’ll keep practicing.”  
  
  
  
“Good.” All the energy comes out of her then and she slumps in her pillows, face looking more tired than ever. Her skin sags as if it cannot bear to carry her bones and clothe them. “I’d like to have passed on something before I leave this world.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun bites his lip. He can see his mother struggling, trying to come up with something to say, but in the end air just gushes out of her mouth and she rubs her mother’s arm in a soothing manner. Baekhyun thinks of how long he’s left his music sheets to rot in his closet. He’s not certain that he can still read notes and play as well as he used to.  
  
  
  
When his grandmother speaks again, she’s looking at the instruments on her walls. “So much talent,” she whispers. “So much talent in this blood. I hope you realize that, young man. It’s nice that you’re trying something new, but don’t forget the music. You will find it closer to kin than most other people do.” She pins him with a look then, one that Baekhyun cannot find it in himself to describe. “Do you understand?”  
  
  
  
“I understand,” he murmurs.  
  
  
  
She nods. “Very well. I need to speak to your mother for a while now, so maybe you can start fulfilling your promise and practice with the piano in your room, yes?”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun stands up and gives a noncommittal shake of his head, crossing the line between _yes_ and _no_. He’ll let his grandmother decide for herself what it means.  
  
  
  
With that, he leaves the room, but not before hearing his grandmother ask: “How much time do I have left?”  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
_He is standing backstage, soaked in nerves from head to toe. Static is embedded into the pads of his fingers, crackling when he so much as touches a nearby wall, and his wrists tingle. It’s odd how the place is so quiet -- something about the lack of sound strikes a wrong chord within him. It feels incomplete.  
  
  
  
He walks out to the stage, a vast wooden platform covered from sight by heavy velvet curtains. Dust settles on everything and tickles his nose. He can build a one-storey house in here, or hold a ball, or raise an entire community of people. There is a feeling trapped beneath his skin, one of combined anxiety and excitement. He flops to the ground and lies down.  
  
  
  
Up above, a hundred different kinds of lights shine down on him, coating him in lurid hues of blue and green and red. Multicolored spots dance in his vision. Expectation thrums throughout the stage, as if it is watching and waiting for what he will do next.  
  
  
  
When he sits up again, the entire place dims until a single spotlight is trained on the middle. He watches the curtains rise, watches the empty chairs judging him even in the gloom. He turns back around, and there is a piano caught in the circle of orange-white, its surface gleaming. He tries to walk toward it but it feels like he is being held back, bolted down to his spot by something greater than he can comprehend.  
  
  
  
Black drips from the surrounding darkness, blobs of it all stacked up until the form becomes liquid, taking on a human shape. He thinks that there must be a vague suggestion of a face but it’s out of focus, pixelating in low quality color blocks and fading out of his consciousness. It approaches the piano with a purposeful stride and settles on the bench, feet pressing down the pedals and fingers splayed on the keys.  
  
  
  
The melody is stronger this time, more noticeable but still indistinguishable. It’s as if it’s coming toward him, closer and closer until the distance has bowed out of the way and left nothing between them, and he cannot make it out. He hears an F sharp, a minor E maybe. Vague chords rise out of air. He watches as the figure continues playing, its form a jelly-like substance rippling with every movement.  
  
  
  
There is something familiar about the figure, taunting him and asking him how he hasn’t figured out its secrets yet. It rankles, and he’s left to deal with questions that tumble against his skull, questions he cannot answer. Questions that roll in rivers of thought, tossed from wave to wave and coming out smooth, drifting back to shore.  
  
  
  
The curtains drop down._  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
Baekhyun goes down to the beach two nights after he wrestles with his mannequins and tries to figure out why the diagonal seams _aren’t_ diagonal. His visits to his grandmother have dwindled to naked seconds spent lingering just outside the room. He doesn’t particularly want to tell his grandmother that the piano remains covered, and Baekhyun is too caught up in sewing clothes, and anyway there is nothing to play. There are probably music sheets here but he doesn’t know where they are, so he thinks there is no point at all in even trying.  
  
  
  
It takes a bit of walking to get to the beach, but Baekhyun slathers sunscreen on his nape and arms and whistles the entire way. He tries not to think of the dreams that have been brewing in the deepest corners of his mind, taking root in the way they always do, and slipping out of reach before Baekhyun can even begin to recall them. It’s frustrating and he’s spent sunrises in bed with his eyes wide open, and he just wants to know what they mean. To at least have pieces of them that he can keep, so he can somehow understand.  
  
  
  
The water is freezing when he dips his feet into it, careful not to scratch his heels on jagged rocks. He debates swimming but without a companion, Baekhyun doesn’t want to risk it. Instead he walks like that, pant legs rolled up to his thighs, looking for seashells down the entire length of the beach. It’s lonely here, and quiet. His grandmother’s property is removed from the rest of the community.  
  
  
  
He thinks of the mint green blazer now thrown on the bed, its zipper just the slightest bit crooked. He thinks of the peplum blouse with too big ruffles and an awkward fit. He thinks and thinks, and Baekhyun finds that he doesn’t want to think anymore. He wants to run. His project’s less of a chance to prove himself, and more of a tumor-inducing headache threatening to take his life away. It’s hard, correcting the little slip-ups -- the slant, the haphazard patterns, the incorrect kind of fabric.  
  
  
  
The breeze cards through his hair and salt spray smacks him in the face, but Baekhyun just sinks deeper into the water. It’s a little warmer now, the heat burrowing into the ocean, and Baekhyun basks there for a few more minutes. He wonders if his grandmother is having a conversation with his parents again. Despite the iron glinting in the old woman’s eyes, they can all feel _the end_  
crawling toward them.  
  
  
  
Yesterday, he’d overheard them talking about the appraisal of the estate’s value and the art pieces. Baekhyun hadn’t stayed to find out specific details, but he knew the beginning of goodbye, knew the necessary preparations that one made before leaving. He knew, and he’d gone to his room and stared at the covered piano for hours.  
  
  
  
He looks up at the mansion, standing tall and ageless against the horizon, and he sighs. It’s been five years. He shouldn’t be this attached to the place, or unsure about the decisions he’s made. It’s not as if things are meant to last forever.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun knows that, and as he wraps the towel around himself, he wonders why he still feels like he’s standing on rocky ground.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
_Flames lick the air around him in bright shades of red and orange, dancing on wicks and wax pooling in glass candle holders. The windows are all thrown open, and moonlight marks its spot on the wooden floor, curtains rustling with every breath.  
  
  
  
There are sheets of lined paper scattered on the desk, hundreds of them. Musical notes are scribbled all over the staff, black ink smudging somewhere along the way, and several have been crossed out. He picks one up, studies the unraveling of a symphony -- he knows it’s supposed to make sense but it doesn’t, not to him, and he can only just pick out the _ do, _the_ re, _the_ mi. _  
  
  
  
Just like before, black flakes off the darkness, and bits and pieces of it slot against each other to create a makeshift human form. It adjusts proportions, carves anatomy out of shadows. Against the flames, a figure with its head bent and hands fisted settles over the scattered papers. He thinks he can see the outline of a pen, slashing frustration across pages and pages of symbols, creating and destroying and starting over again.  
  
  
  
It doesn’t make much sense to him. But then he thinks of his own failed designs and the difficulty of execution, of nights spent looking for perfection and only coming up with something that’s not even close. The ability to create isn’t for the sane. It isn’t for those with simple aspirations, who can walk away and not look back.  
  
  
  
He’s never tried to compose songs, and maybe he can’t quite sympathize with the figure, but it’s a waste. It’s a waste, these bits and pieces of charred plant pulp falling to the ground. Paper confetti, all of them -- ripped up and thrown and reduced to ashes. The figure keeps writing. Its motions are furious now. There is a certain kind of desperation in the way it writes faster and faster and faster.  
  
  
  
When the flames burn brighter, they become fixed twin points of passion, growing and growing until there is nothing else to see._  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
He stares at the mannequins propped on his desk, all prepped up with nowhere to go. In the back of his mind, there’s a little nudge telling him he should be happy that his prototypes are done and look as similar to his drawings as they will ever be. But Baekhyun’s too fixated on the wooden surface and remembering how, in last night’s dream, it had succumbed beneath the mess of papers and pens and ink.  
  
  
  
It’s hard, putting the dreams in corners where Baekhyun can avoid them. There is something unsettling about them and the way they seem to be forming a pattern, changing every time and yet somehow linked to the last, and he almost drowns in their clamor to be _remembered_. They tug at him in the moments when there is nothing to occupy him. He grows wary of empty spaces in the house, now. Where shadows lurk, he sees flashes of the figure forming, and a chill trails up his spine.  
  
  
  
It reminds him of the penny papers his classmates used to buy from the vendor in front of the middle school, newsprint staining their fingers gray when they sat on desks and read the stories out loud. _Horror_ , his friend Jongdae would say, the cat-like corners of his lips turned up. Jongdae would invade Baekhyun’s space and swing his legs in glee while brandishing the paper in front of him. He’d pry off the hands Baekhyun covered his ears with and, with a dramatic exhale, begin to act out the tale of a man seeing a ghost in the bathroom. It was strange, the sensationalism of these stories. Ladies in white appearing in mirrors, and the sound of chains being dragged down an empty hallway, and spirits that came to wreck lives or exact vengeance -- all of these used to scare Baekhyun witless. Jongdae knew, and so Jongdae would pick the worst of them all.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun’s never believed, tries not to believe, in the supernatural. In high school he’d convinced himself that the stories Jongdae told him were created for the cheap thrill, the momentary burst of adrenaline. Still, he shrouds himself in blankets at night and wonders if there is any merit to them at all, his suspicions only heightened ever since the dreams began.  
  
  
  
The house is old, after all. It’s said _hello_ and _goodbye_ to lives more ancient than his grandparents’, dating back centuries. Baekhyun’s reminded of it whenever he walks into the library and gets hit, not by the clouds of dust, but by the knowledge the place has accumulated. He’s seen medieval texts in the shelves, yellowing parchment bound by strips of leather, an occasional scroll. He’s not into literature but Baekhyun likes to explore, and the library has always struck him as the one place that reminds him of how much the house has aged.  
  
  
  
He walks out of his bedroom and wonders if his parents are still talking about wills and inheritance and legalities with his grandmother. They’ve been doing that for weeks now -- his mother always reluctant to broach the topic, his father neutral, his grandmother insistent about setting things in place. _You cannot expect me not to do this_ , he overhears his grandmother once, when he stands outside the door far longer than he’s planned to. _You cannot expect me to leave this world without making sure that everything has been cared for_.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t know if anything’s going to him. In the end, he finds that he doesn’t care. But his grandmother cares, and even he can feel the urgency that gathers in her irises, the need to ensure everything will be alright even when she is gone. It’s something people are obsessed with, people who can feel their time running out, the fabled clock ticking within their hearts.  
  
  
  
He waits outside the door, tries to make out if there is another conversation. It’s quiet, though, which can mean three things: his grandmother’s asleep, or she’s awake but she has no visitors, or she does have visitors but no one is speaking. Baekhyun decides to take the risk and turns the knob.  
  
  
  
“Have you kept your promise, Baekhyunnie?” His grandmother is standing beside the window, hand clutching the frame for support, but she doesn’t turn around. Baekhyun wonders how she knows it’s him, and then he sees his reflection in the glass pane.  
  
  
  
“I --” He hesitates, not wanting to disappoint her but not wanting to lie, either. “I haven’t had the time,” he says, keeping his gaze on the floor.  
  
  
  
“Then when will you have the time?” she asks, and this time, she’s facing him. There is a steadiness to her movements despite the fact that it seems as though she will break at any given moment. “When you’ve forgotten everything?”  
  
  
  
“I don’t even remember much,” Baekhyun says. He shoves his hands in his pockets, tries not to twist and turn his fingers in the way that he knows will have his grandmother wrinkling her brows in annoyance. “It’s -- It’s not the same.”  
  
  
  
“Have you even tried?” She totters as she walks toward him. Baekhyun darts forward, about to offer a hand, but she gives him a look that tells him, _I can do this_. He relents because he knows his grandmother likes to prove that she’s stronger than she looks, but he keeps an eye on her all the same. “Have you even sat down on the bench and tried to play a piece?”  
  
  
  
“No,” Baekhyun admits. He remembers his dream, though, the symbols that he cannot interpret anymore etched on papers that make even less sense. “No, but --”  
  
  
  
“Go sit at the piano, young man,” his grandmother says, stopping where she is. Her tone is stern, her gaze determined. She points to the upright piano standing off in a corner of the room, cloaked in white linen. It’s newer than any of the other musical instruments hanging about, Baekhyun knows, a gift to her from his grandfather.  
  
  
  
After a second, Baekhyun walks over to it and pulls off the cover. The piano’s polished to the hilt of gleaming, and when he presses a key, the sound it makes says that it’s been kept in tune. His grandmother’s hand weighs him down as she makes him sit down, and then she’s occupying the rest of the space on the bench. It feels a lot like old times, when he was little and still trying to remember what the sharps meant, his grandmother patiently explaining things to him.  
  
  
  
Now she opens the folder that’s been resting on the stand, flipping through the pages and stopping at one. “Play this,” she says.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun blinks. “This?” He can feel the sweat creating a film over his palms. “Grandma, I can’t play this.”  
  
  
  
“And why not?” She raises an eyebrow at him and taps the page. “It’s not something you can’t handle.”  
  
  
  
“It’s Tchaikovsky,” Baekhyun says in disbelief. “You’re asking me to play Tchaikovsky’s _Concerto No. 1 Op. 23 when I haven’t played the piano in years_.”  
  
  
  
“You’re being far too dramatic about this, my dear Baekhyunnie. Are you sure you should be pursuing fashion instead of theater? At least theaters have orchestras.” Her wrist is bent, right hand settling down the ivory and black. Then she is playing the first half of the piece, traveling across the keys, chanting the notes. She stops after a few seconds and looks at him. “Don’t tell me you can’t do anything when you haven’t even lifted a finger yet. You will learn this piece, no matter how long it takes you.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun gulps and positions his hands. He’s just glad that his grandmother’s never felt the need to rap his knuckles with a wooden stick, like some of his tutors used to.  
  
  
  
It’s almost sundown when his grandmother ends the lesson, the smile on her face creaking with disuse yet brilliant for its rarity. “You’ve done well,” she says, closing the folder. “Nowhere near as good as you were before, but we’ll work back up to that point soon enough. Wait here.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun watches as she rummages through her closet, his palms sore and his wrists tingling with effort. There is a sense of fulfillment flooding him, one that can only come from the attempt to conquer Tchaikovsky, and a strange kind of missing floods his chest. He’s never dwelt on it but he’s missed this, missed the instrument he’s grown up with for most of his life.  
  
  
  
Her grandmother returns to his side, dropping a key in his hands. “This is for the locked cabinet in your bedroom,” she says. “There are music sheets inside it -- they’re really old, older than I am, but they won’t disintegrate when you touch them. At least, I hope not. The piano in your room is also in working condition, so I expect you to practice when you have the time.” She looks at him dead in the eye. “Do you understand?”  
  
  
  
“Yes,” Baekhyun says. “Yes, I understand.”  
  
  
  
“Good,” she says, nodding her head. “Off with you, then. Please call your mother for me.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun obliges. Before he exits, though, he says, “Grandma?”  
  
  
  
“Yes?”  
  
  
  
“Thank you. For everything.”  
  
  
  
He thinks her face lights up with another smile as he closes the door behind him, but Baekhyun isn’t all that certain.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
_He’s in a different room this time, a plain space with all the windows open. Fading pictures hang on the walls. Everything is brushed over in sepia, colors toned down to their earthiest natures, but it’s a clear improvement from all that darkness.  
  
  
  
He walks around, hesitant fingertips hovering over every single thing in the room. It’s as if the place is caught in transition -- caught in that delicate in-between dividing what is temporary and what is permanent. It’s that balance of leaving and staying; of someone moving in and planting memories on the walls, or of someone saying goodbye and taking everything away.  
  
  
  
It’s less suffocating here. The past few dreams have left him with a gaping hole in his chest, scooping something fundamental out of him and filling him with copious amounts of emptiness. There is a demand that seeps into his skin, trying to spur him into action, but he doesn’t know what do. He doesn’t know why he sees these things. He doesn’t know what any of this is supposed to mean.  
  
  
  
But the gentle tinkling of wind chimes and the fluttering dust give him a sense of tranquility. An odd brand of calmness that splits his anxiety into clean halves and sinks sweetly in his heart. It’s less likely to lose himself here, to forget what he’s done and who he is. The air whispers of laughter. The clock ticks with expectation. He rests an elbow on the window sill and gazes out miles of dirt road, stretching beyond the horizon.  
  
  
  
Too late does he pick up on the _ clack _s of approaching footsteps, the_ click _of a knob’s gears turning, the sudden rush of stale air coming from the rest of the house. He turns, has glimpses of a gray vest and a white dress shirt; then he’s stumbling back to the corner and watching the person move about the room.  
  
  
  
It’s when he turns around that he sees the face: features vague, skin color white, enshrouded in a pixelated buzz that has him wondering just how much he’s allowed to know. He swallows, takes a step forward. Tries to get a clearer view -- _  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
He doesn’t know how he ends up with his face pressed against the carpeted floor, sunlight pooling in the small of his back and sweat coating his neck. It’s either far too late in the night or far too early in the morning. Baekhyun hoists himself up on all fours, reaches for the phone that’s sitting on the bedside table an arm’s length away from him. He blinks. It’s 2:33 in the morning, and he knows enough about silly beliefs and superstitions to have a chill raising goosebumps along his arms. It’s 27 minutes to the devil’s hour, and he really doesn’t want to be awake right now, doesn’t want to be vulnerable to any sightings or spirits about to ruin his already turbulent night.  
  
  
  
When he closes his eyes, a face with static crackling along the edges greets him, flickering through cmyk color scheme settings and then bursting into pieces. It bothers him. There is curiosity, yes, at what the face looks like. But there is also apprehension, bubbling in the silence and spilling over when he lowers his guard.  
  
  
  
He takes a deep breath. Then with a push, he’s standing up and stumbling back to the bed, knees collapsing halfway through. A sigh worms its way out of his lips. Baekhyun clutches the edge of the mattress for leverage and clambers up, scattered blankets slipping down an inch closer to the ground. For a few minutes, he just sits there with a hand over his heart, waiting for it to resume its normal rhythm.  
  
  
  
At first he thinks he’s just imagining things when the pool of moonlight forming a few feet away is disturbed by a flash of darkness. It’s a slight hint of motion, something that he’s probably conjured in the depths of his thoughts.  
  
  
  
But then a silhouette settles right in front of the open windows, and Baekhyun’s never been all that brave -- he’s never believed in ghosts and horror stories, never -- and a whimper claws at his throat. He sits there, paralyzed, unable to comprehend anything. And then he’s diving under his blankets, his pillows; he piles them all up and buries himself underneath the weight of them.  
  
  
  
The tolling of the grandfather clock drowns out his scream.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
For a few days, Baekhyun falls into dreamless pits and doesn’t see anymore silhouettes. It’s a small comfort. Still, anxiety crackles in his unconsciousness, and he’s on edge most of the time. Even his familiar ritual of stitching seams and the steady hum of the sewing machine can’t soothe him.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun continues to keep the cabinet locked, dropping the keys on his desk but never inclined to use them. He’s uncovered the piano, though, coughing a little at the dust that rises when he shakes the crochet lace. It’s still in good working condition, singing _do re mi_ underneath his fingertips. He puts off opening the cabinet for another day.  
  
  
  
By now, the outfits he’s making are almost finished, scraps of fabric glistening beneath the fluorescent lights. Baekhyun envisions people wearing, his head filled with the sound of applause as his hand-picked models walk down the runway. Then a blush stains his neck and cheeks and he hides his face in his hands, trying to quell the pride churning acidic in his stomach. It’s too early for him to be this ambitious.  
  
  
  
It’s a sticky Saturday morning, sweat trailing down skin and the house more stifling than usual, when Baekhyun decides to go down again to the beach. He finds his father walking on the shore, pant legs rolled up. Something about his expression tells Baekhyun that he’s lost in thought. But then he raises his head and spots Baekhyun, and he beckons him forward with a gesture of his hands, eyebrows knitting together.  
  
  
  
“What are you doing here?” his father asks, sticking his hands in his pockets. Baekhyun thinks it’s been some time since the two of them have talked alone. His father’s not the demonstrative type, and Baekhyun almost never sees him until late in the evening, when work hours are over and self-respecting businessmen are making their way back to their homes.  
  
  
  
“I was thinking of going for a swim,” he says, running his hand through his hair. The sand feels gritty between his toes. “It’s too hot inside the house.”  
  
  
  
His father nods his head in agreement. They stand there, the seconds dripping between them in silence, and it’s more than a little awkward how neither of them have anything to say to each other. Baekhyun clears his throat in search of something to say, but his father beats him to it.  
  
  
  
“How’s your project?”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun stills. Aside from his mother who’s taken it upon herself to support her youngest son, no one’s ever bothered asking him about his course and what he does. His father’s never opposed his decision but the disapproval is there, echoing with every crinkle of the newspaper that he reads at breakfast. Baekhyun knows his father’s wanted a lawyer in the family, or a doctor, or an accountant. He and Baekbeom do a good job at not living up to his expectations.  
  
  
  
“It’s -- It’s fine,” he manages to say around the sudden dryness of his vocal cords. “I’m nearly done with the outfits. I just…” He hesitates, trying to gauge his father’s expression before continuing. “I just need to see if they fit the models.”  
  
  
  
“Are you happy with it?” his father asks.  
  
  
  
“Of course,” Baekhyun rushes to say, “Of course I am. I used to think I wouldn’t be able to last, but I did, and I don’t think I want to do anything else.” In the periphery of his vision, he senses some kind of motion but Baekhyun dismisses it as just a bird flying past.  
  
  
  
His father sighs. “Well, that’s that,” he says. “Nothing we can do if your heart’s set on something else.” He gives Baekhyun a smile bordering on tentative and unsure. “I’ll tell your grandmother to stop pushing you to do music.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun’s chest squeezes in on itself. “What?” he asks. The movement, he notices, is more distinct this time. His hands feel clammy. He refuses to acknowledge what he’s seeing.  
  
  
  
“I know I haven’t really been supportive of you and your course choice,” his father says. “But I want you to know that I’d rather have you pursue something you really want than something you were forced to take for convenience.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun swallows. He’s just about to say something, but then the waves come crashing and he and his father scramble backward to avoid getting hit. And the words are still there on his tongue, but Baekhyun looks up and he’s choking them down, because the silhouette is just a stone’s throw away from him.  
  
  
  
It’s suffused in the backlit glow coming from the sun, a dark, human-shaped speck. Yet Baekhyun can feel its gaze on him, trained on his face. His inhales are slow. There’s a tap on his shoulder but Baekhyun’s immobile, and he doesn’t know what to do, _why is the silhouette here --_  
  
  
  
“Baekhyun?” A hand passes over his face and Baekhyun gives a start.  
  
  
  
He turns to his father, voice still shaking as he says, “Yes?”  
  
  
  
His father frowns at him. “Is there something wrong?”  
  
  
  
“Nothing,” Baekhyun says. He looks back to where the silhouette had been, and he blinks. It’s gone. There is only sun and sea and surf staring back at him. “Nothing…” he says again, but this time it’s an empty echo. Had he imagined it?  
  
  
  
“Are you sure?” his father asks, sounding concerned.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun nods, not quite trusting himself to speak.  
  
  
  
“I’ll go on ahead,” his father says, hand settling warm and heavy on Baekhyun’s shoulder for a second. “Don’t stay out here too late.”  
  
  
  
He walks off, leaving Baekhyun to stare at the spot where the silhouette was just moments ago. Maybe, maybe he was just so stressed that he’d started seeing things. With a sigh, he walks toward the edges of the shore and dives in, the water erasing bits and pieces of heat from his skin. The taste of salt rests on his tongue.  
  
  
  
When he swims back to the surface and raises his head, he sees it. The silhouette is back, and it’s too far for him to make out what it looks like, but it’s sitting on the sand and Baekhyun knows it’s watching him.  
  
  
  
He swallows and dives back into the water.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
“You didn’t practice at all.”  
  
  
  
It’s only the two of them inside the room, Baekhyun hovering at the foot of the bed while his grandmother’s gaunt face peers at him amidst the blankets piled on her. Her hair is loose, ends curling from all the braiding, and there is something like steel in her gaze. Baekhyun shifts from foot to foot.  
  
  
  
“It would be better if you were more honest with me.”  
  
  
  
He breathes in. “No,” he says, and listens to the way the word seems to shatter the tranquility of the room. “I didn’t.”  
  
  
  
It’s strange how his grandmother doesn’t say anything to that, and yet disappointment slips in through the cracks in the walls. He can feel it settling, thick and viscous, in the very air between them. Baekhyun doesn’t like it, this feeling -- doesn’t like looking at his grandmother and finding only a certain blankness on her face.  
  
  
  
“Well,” she says, and sighs. “I guess I was wrong. It can’t be helped that you’re not interested in music anymore. Perhaps you grew out of it a long time ago and I pretended not to notice.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun wants to tell her, _No_. He wants to say, _I haven’t grown out of it at all. It’s still here, in my bones_. But how to say those things, how to admit to them, when at the end of the day he’ll be more preoccupied with basting techniques than Chopin’s _Nocturne in C sharp minor_? He feels like he’s holding a tangled skein of yarn in his hands, desperately trying to pick apart the strands and only ending up making more knots.  
  
  
  
“I don’t want to force you,” she says. “I never wanted to. It is simply that I saw potential in you, and talent. And, for a time, I thought you loved music as much as I did -- as I _do_ \-- and that was true. Now, I don’t think it is anymore.”  
  
  
  
Something heavy clambers up his rib cage. It is twice the weight of any emotion he’s ever encountered, and Baekhyun thinks it’s a lot like sadness. He doesn’t understand himself anymore. He doesn’t know what he wants.  
  
  
  
He opens his mouth to speak then stops.  
  
  
  
Leaning against the headboard is the silhouette, obscured in the shadows and carrying an aura of judgment. He glances at his grandmother, wondering if she’s noticed it, if he must point it out to her. But the silhouette begins moving, and Baekhyun watches in horror as it brings a finger up to its lips. He shudders.  
  
  
  
“Baekhyun? Are you listening to me?”  
  
  
  
It takes him a lot of effort to stay in his place and not bolt out of the door. “Yes,” he says, hoping the silhouette will disappear.  
  
  
  
His grandmother frowns. “You’re acting very odd today,” she says.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun holds back the urge to say, _You’d be acting very odd, too, if you could see that thing following me!_ He doesn’t want to draw more attention than he has to. He’ll just be pegged as insane and off his rocker.  
  
  
  
“I’m fine,” he says. “I -- grandma --”  
  
  
  
She holds up a hand. “I’m not expecting you to continue playing the piano if you don’t want to,” she says, and _the silhouette is coming near_ , and Baekhyun is panicking. “But maybe you can make it a hobby? Don’t let the tradition die, Baekhyun. This family has always had a musician.”  
  
  
  
Something about her tone unsettles him. It makes him think of his monochromatic dreams, of sheets consumed into ashes and enormous performance halls and the faint melody lying beneath. His mother’s told him about this -- about her sister Sunyoung, who’d inherited the musical genes and now toured the world with an orchestra. _Always someone in the family, Baekhyun_ , he remembers her whispering in his ear after his piano tutor left. _I guess, for this generation, it is you._  
  
  
  
The silhouette tilts his head, as if knowing what he is thinking.  
  
  
  
“I’ll think about it,” he says, fingers digging into his palms. “I’ll try to get in an hour or so of practice when I can.”  
  
  
  
“That is a compromise, then,” his grandmother says, pursing her lips. “Very well, Baekhyunnie. I hope you play the death march during my funeral.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun steps back, the statement a slap on his face. “Grandmother --”  
  
  
  
She laughs, and Baekhyun must be imagining it but the silhouette is curled around her now, sinking into her blankets and draping itself on her skin. “I’m only kidding, dear boy,” she says, although her mirth is less real and more artificial than Baekhyun’s ever seen.  
  
  
  
She’s not kidding at all, and both of them know it. The truth is a subtle little thing, darting back and forth between them, but it’s there. He looks at her and sees an old woman holding on to the fraying strings of life keeping her together.  
  
  
  
He looks at her, and he sees how much she’s wanted to let go a long time ago.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun takes a step back. “Alright then, grandmother,” he says, keeping his voice as steady as possible. “I’ll be going now.”  
  
  
  
When he takes one last glimpse, he sees the silhouette perched on the seat by his grandmother’s bedside, no longer watching him.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
_It feels more like a memory than a dream this time. He’s back in their family’s house, sitting at his desk with an armload of fabrics and a sewing machine. There are pins scattered throughout the surface. Thread winds round his wrist, and measuring tape hangs from his neck, and feathers nest in his hair.  
  
  
  
He sits back, allowing the velvet to spill into his lap as he cuts out the patterns for the dress he’s making. The clock ticks the seconds away in a corner of his room. It’s warm despite the presence of an air conditioning unit, the cold coming in short intervals that dissipate all too easily in the humidity.  
  
  
  
The sound of the phone ringing creeps in through the cracks in the doorframe. He sighs and sets down the velvet, taking care to place the needle and pins inside the kit so they won’t roll down to the floor. Three rings now. He pushes back the chair and turns around.  
  
  
  
There, sitting on the bed, is the same static figure. Except right now it’s not so static, every detail sharpened to the nth degree, and it takes all of his willpower to hold his ground. Because the figure is turning its head, and he wants to know what it looks like so, so bad. He wants but he’s scared, and his hands are clenched.  
  
  
  
Staring back at him is a face he’s lived with for 20 years. The slanted, small eyes, the slightly wide nose, the thin pink lips with the mole on the upper right corner. Shock runs through his veins. He knows what he’s looking at. He knows this face, has known it for a long time.  
  
  
  
It’s the same face he sees in the mirror every day, when he’s rimming his eyes with eyeliner; every night, when he’s about to go to bed and trying to gauge how bad his skin is. It’s facing him down, and the figure is dressed in white longsleeves, a black vest, black slacks and black leather shoes. He looks down at his own pajamas.  
  
  
  
For the first time, the figure speaks:  
  
  
  
“Hello, Baekhyunnie.”_  
  
  
  


÷

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

  
  
When the next morning seeps through the glass, Baekhyun pads over to the desk and grabs the keys to the cabinet. The lock’s all rusted over and it leaves him with copper-stained hands. He coughs as the dust billows upward, lungs heaving with the effort of making the particles find a new home.

 

 

The music sheets he finds are tinged with yellow and their edges are crumbling, long since held hostage to time and the elements, and Baekhyun gathers them up in his arms with care. He sets the first stack down on the desk and finds a glass paperweight to keep it in place. It takes him five trips to clear out everything inside the cabinet.

 

 

He hears the tinkling of the bell traveling down the hallways but pays it no mind, telling himself that this is more important than breakfast. His stomach twists in clear disagreement. Baekhyun decides it’s too spoiled and sits down, pulling the stacks closer and leafing through them.

 

 

There are copies of pieces he’s seen before -- Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Mozart -- and some that are so so obviously handwritten and self-composed. He looks over the familiar terms, _andante_ and _legato_ and _moderato_ , then sets the more well-known compositions aside for the self-composed ones.

 

 

None of them have titles. They’re all done in the same spidery black ink, the notes resembling ants scurrying across parchment. Baekhyun selects one and props it on the music stand, and he uncovers the piano in the room.

 

 

It’s difficult, reading the notes. They don’t speak to him the way they used to, and it’s harder for him to identify how long the rests must be played, and how to let his fingers climb up and down the octaves. Every pressed key is a tentative step forward; every flat and sharp coming out flatter and sharper than usual. No one is around to judge him, or teach him, or simply stand beside him.

 

 

When he feels the shallow dip of the bench and a presence lighter than air feathering against his left side, Baekhyun keeps playing. His gaze is fixed on the music sheet. His fingers trip, and there are nerves consuming his stomach, and anxiety is dancing on his kneecaps. He’s too scared to look up.

 

 

Hands as insubstantial as smoke ghost over his own, playing the same piece. But where Baekhyun falters, these hands are more accurate, more precise. He’s left with a slight tickling sensation on his skin when the hands are on top of his.

 

 

He stops and turns his head.

 

 

Once again, he’s knocked out of breath at how the silhouette looks so much like him. There is the same sweep of the jaw, the delicate wrist, the lean fingers -- the shell of the ear, the ruffled brown hair, the mole just above the right corner of his lips. It’s almost as if he’s staring at his own reflection, if not for the fact that the intangible guy beside him is dressed in a different way, and he exudes a certain aura. Adulthood clings to his form in a manner that hasn’t happened to Baekhyun yet.

 

 

The smoke-man ends with a flourish, the melody drifting from his fingertips as easily as breathing. Baekhyun envies it. He wonders if this is who he will be in the future, executing the most complicated compositions with ease, spine stiff with all the rigor of maintaining proper posture.

 

 

“Who are you?” he finds himself asking, thinking in the back of his mind that this is so _absurd_. It’s not as if this -- this creature will answer him, it’s not as if Baekhyun wants to know --

 

 

The smoke-man tilts his head, appraising him. Then a smile blooms across his lips, small, sharp canines jutting out, and it wrenches Baekhyun’s heart a little because this is the same smile he wears in family photographs. “My name,” he says, and it sounds so muted and far away, “is Baekhyun.”

 

 

“But that’s _my_ name,” Baekhyun snaps, unable to wrap his thoughts around what’s happening. This shouldn’t be possible. He must simply be so stressed that he’s beginning to imagine ghosts talking to him. Yes, that’s it.

 

 

Other Baekhyun chuckles, eyes narrowing into dark crescents of amusement. “It’s my name, too,” he says. His syllables are riddled with static. “We can share? I can be Baekhyun, and you can be Baekhyunnie.”

 

 

Baekhyun folds his arms over his chest. “Why am _I_ Baekhyunnie?”

 

 

Other Baekhyun shrugs. “Because no one calls me Baekhyunnie.”

 

 

Baekhyun licks his lips. “Are you me, then?” he asks. “Are you the future me?”

 

 

“Do you want me to be?” Other Baekhyun leans close and tilts his head in inquiry. “I could be.”

 

 

Baekhyun inches backward. “Who _are_ you?”

 

 

“I can be whoever you want me to be,” Other Baekhyun says with a chuckle. “I am Baekhyun, after all. I am _you_.”

 

 

“You’re not me,” Baekhyun whispers. He’s locked in a staring contest with this -- this -- this _apparition_ pretending to be him. A faint cutscene plays in his head, one of Jongdae telling him about doppelgangers and how seeing one meant that you would die soon. Baekhyun doesn’t want to die. He hasn’t checked his model’s measurements yet and altered the outfits as needed.

 

 

“Believe what you want to believe, Baekhyunnie.” Other Baekhyun shrugs. Wisps of his form are starting to dissipate in the air. His voice sounds more muffled, choked down. “It doesn’t change who I am.”

 

 

And then he’s gone, leaving the spot beside Baekhyun empty and gaping. Out of instinct, he reaches out and feels ice coating his fingers, a chill plumbing his bones. He registers the fear before the anxiety, and soon Baekhyun’s covered the piano again and returned the music sheets to the cabinet, trying to calm himself. He feels a lot like an earthquake’s just ruined the ground beneath his feet, pulled it under him and left him sprawling. The mental aftershocks continue.

 

 

_Believe what you want to believe._

 

 

Baekhyun doesn’t know what to believe. Does he believe that the thing he saw earlier was a doppelganger? Or his future self, come to visit him? Or maybe, maybe Baekhyun’s been running too much on dead battery, that he’s started to hallucinate.

 

 

He decides that the best cure is probably breakfast.

 

 

÷

  
  
  
  
Three days go by without anymore appearances or nightmares, and Baekhyun is halfway through just signing off the entire piano incident. Perhaps his imagination had simply gone into overdrive, racing straight out of the boundaries between what was real and what was not, and he’d conjured the smoky silhouette from a fear that’s been buried long ago. He thinks it may have something to do with his grandmother and her insistence on him continuing with his lessons. Even when he’s cocooning himself in the bliss of sleep, her words ring out: _This family has always had a musician._  
  
  
  
He looks at Baekbeom sometimes and wonders how different things would have been if it were his brother who had exhibited a musical inclination. It nags at him, because he knows Baekbeom’s never touched a musical instrument in his life. He was far more interested in computers and algorithms and numbers, his brain going through a scrolling list of mathematical equations even when he was a kid, and it’s safe to say that his grandmother’s never told him about carrying on a family tradition. Baekhyun knows, because Baekbeom had only pulled a blank face when he’d asked him about there always being a musician in every generation.  
  
  
  
“Well,” his brother had said, pausing from solving whatever problem he’d found, “It’s not me.”  
  
  
  
He asks his mother about this after breakfast one day, and she simply throws him a smile that meant little to him and nothing to her. “It could be him,” he says. “Maybe if you’d trained him like you’d trained me, he’d be the musician in the family.”  
  
  
  
“You don’t understand,” she says. “It had to be you. The same way that it had to be my sister Sunyoung, not me.”  
  
  
  
“What does that mean?” he asks. “It’s not as if things are predestined.”  
  
  
  
“It’s more than that, Baekhyun,” his mother says. “When he was younger, your brother preferred playing with his abacus and toy cashiers than sitting down and listening to your grandmother sing. Likewise, I spent most of my childhood holding tea parties with my dolls and making my father -- your grandfather -- pretend to eat mud pies, while Sunyoung kept asking my mother to let her hold the violin. Interests manifest earlier than you think they do. Baekbeom didn’t want to play musical instruments, but then you came along.”  
  
  
  
“But why is it necessary?” Baekhyun frowns, trying to make sense of things. “Why does this family have to have a musician? I know it’s a tradition, I know it’s somehow supposed to matter, but I just don’t see _why_. It’s not like anything bad will happen if I choose to leave the piano behind.”  
  
  
  
His mother sighs and steps forward, reaching out to take his hands in hers. It’s been a long time since she’s done something like this, Baekhyun thinks, and he realizes that there’s a layer of roughness on her skin now.  
  
  
  
“I don’t know how to explain,” she says. “But Baekhyun, the day you clambered up the bench and pressed random keys, we knew why it would not be Baekbeom. Your grandmother knew, too, even if she did say you were making a _cacophony_.” She bites her lip and looks down. “I was never told why it was so important to carry on the family tradition. I just know that it’s important to your grandmother. And Baekhyun, I -- you know that I support your decisions, that I’ve always been encouraging you, but --” She takes a deep breath, now, but it’s not enough to hide the tears glistening in her eyes.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t think he’s ever seen his mother look this vulnerable. She’d hidden her tears, tucked away he frustrations, packed her fatigue in boxes kept out of sight. It makes him want to say something, anything at all.  
  
  
  
“But your grandmother has so little time left,” she continues, her voice softer now. “And this is important to her, and I just -- I just --”  
  
  
  
“It’s okay,” Baekhyun says, squeezing her hands. “It’s okay, I understand. It’s not like I hate doing it, anyway. I was only wondering why.”  
  
  
  
His mother nods her head and unclasps their hands. She takes a step back, and seeing the look in Baekhyun’s eyes, she says, “Make no mistake, Baekhyun. Your grandmother loved me as much as she loved your Aunt Sunyoung. I may not have been a musician, and I may not have spent hours going to concerts with her, but she loved me in a different way.”  
  
  
  
“Okay,” Baekhyun says. The certainty in his mother’s tone keeps his doubts locked up. “I believe you.”  
  
  
  
She turns on her heel and walks away, leaving Baekhyun to stare at the wall.  
  
  
  
A wall painted in a rich cream color, with a familiar smoky figure standing in front of it. And he’s been halfway through deciding that it had just been a figment of his imagination, but as he is pinned with his look-alike’s stare ( _does he ever look as intimidating as that?_ ), a feeling sinks to the bottom of his stomach.  
  
  
  
The silhouette is real, and there is a smirk sliding viscous across lips so similar to his own.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
It happens in the second room down the corridor, one that no one ever uses because it’s meant more for storage than for resting. Baekhyun finds himself there after he’s had the finished outfits dry-cleaned and pressed and placed in garment bags, ready for shipping back to the city so that the models can run the dress rehearsals, and there’s no way he’ll be able to drive there. He has to trust the seamstresses on hand for any necessary alterations.  
  
  
  
Having nothing to do after working for days is a contrast of blacks and whites overlapping in his consciousness. He’s restless, and a familiar energy’s humming along his veins, even as he tries not to think about the _thing_ that’s been following him around lately. Baekbeom’s too immersed in some code that he keeps muttering about wherever he goes, and Baekhyun’s not sure where his parents have gone. So he decides that exploring the house is the best way to stave off boredom, and soon he’s turning the knob of an unlocked door.  
  
  
  
The room is filled with cabinets all around and boxes stacked ten deep. Embedded into the center wall is a mirror in an ornate golden frame, the reflective surface speckled with dust and dirt. He takes care to breathe through his nose, the smell of mothballs hanging too thick in the air. The boxes are filled with random knick knacks: candle holders with dried wax, photos buried by time, an assortment of quarter-filled perfume bottles.  
  
  
  
He opens a cabinet and sees skeletal hangers of torn and tattered clothes. There is a midnight blue polyester suit that he wrinkles his nose at, and a beaded red flapper dress with less than half the amount of beads it’s supposed to have. Baekhyun cards through them and finds a black fedora with a jaunty yellow feather stuck in its band. It’s silly, and he knows he’ll look silly, but he brushes off as much of the dust as he can and goes over to the mirror while cramming it on his head.  
  
  
  
“What are you doing?” he asks himself, chuckling as he adjusts the feather that’s limping in the air. He looks downright ridiculous.  
  
  
  
“That doesn’t look so flattering.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun freezes. The voice is scratching its way up to the surface, a little like the clarity and volume of it is obscured by a whole lot of static. But he knows it, recognizes it, drowns in how it is a faded echo of his own.  
  
  
  
He lifts his eyes up and swallows when he sees the silhouette emerge from a gap between the stacks of boxes, dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt and black slacks. The way he moves is both graceful and self-possessed, coming to a stop beside Baekhyun. He can feel the fingers of cold reaching out to him, clamping around his elbow. The fight to keep down the scream simmering in his vocal cords is desperate.  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun taps the mirror and Baekhyun follows the motion, his stomach turning when he sees their reflections. He thinks back to the stories Jongdae used to tell him, feet kicking his chair and hands insistently turning Baekhyun around to face him, voice high and bright and whiny. _You know how you can tell if it’s a ghost, Baekhyun-ah?_ he remembers him saying with crinkled eyes. _They don’t have reflections!_  
  
  
  
As if knowing where his thoughts are going, Other Baekhyun says, “I’m not a ghost. I’m not an apparition either, Baekhyunnie.”  
  
  
  
He hates the saccharine undertones of the way his name is pronounced.  
  
  
  
“I’m not interested in knowing who or what you are,” Baekhyun says. He tries to keep himself steady. “I don’t care.”  
  
  
  
“Don’t you?” Other Baekhyun tips his head back and laughs, and Baekhyun tries not to stare at the exposed column of his throat. It feels too much like admiring himself. “Aren’t you interested in knowing why we look so much alike, Baekhyunnie?”  
  
  
  
“You’re a trick of the light,” Baekhyun says. “Just a shadow.”  
  
  
  
“I assure you, Baekhyunnie, I am not a shadow,” Other Baekhyun says. He catches Baekhyun’s gaze in the mirror and tilts his head. “Same face shape, same nose,” he says. His right hand comes up and begins to trace Baekhyun’s reflection, and Baekhyun shivers. It feels intimate, the way his fingertips linger on every feature, almost like he’s touching Baekhyun himself. “Hearing me is like hearing yourself.”  
  
  
  
“I don’t want anything to do with you,” Baekhyun murmurs. “I don’t want to know _you_.”  
  
  
  
“Mmm. Not even when I say that I am who you could have been?”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun turns and is met with the man’s profile, cheek lifted up in a soft smile. He’s still staring straight ahead while Baekhyun’s looking at him. “What?”  
  
  
  
“If you’d chosen music,” Other Baekhyun says in a casual tone. “If you’d been the older son. If you’d gone to that one piano tutoring session instead of playing with your friends in the park. If you’d passed your homework on time...Ah, so many _what if_ s, Baekhyunnie.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun’s mind is racing ahead but he’s frozen, trapped in that moment and unable to comprehend. “I don’t understand.”  
  
“Of course not.” Other Baekhyun turns to look at him then, and Baekhyun sees himself sinking in those brown irises. He registers the hand cupping his face when a frisson of ice threads itself into his nerves and he gasps. “But you will soon.”  
  
  
  
When Other Baekhyun’s gone and taken the shadows with him, Baekhyun’s cheek still feels numb.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
When the silhouette appears during dinner one night, Baekhyun’s perched on the precipice of his patience and ready to jump. It’s been bothering him, how Other Baekhyun’s grown more and more substantial over the past few days, the hues of his form more vibrant and the edges of his existence sharpening. Even his voice sounds less like the wind’s trying to steal it away and more like it’s whispering directly into his ear. Baekhyun doesn’t know what all of these changes mean but he’s bothered, and when Other Baekhyun shows up and smirks at him from a corner of the room, he only just keeps himself together.  
  
  
  
He wonders why he’s the only one who can see him. It’s obvious from the way his parents and his brother continue their conversation that they can’t see the silhouette at all. He feels like he’s split down the middle right now, talking to his family one moment, and keeping an eye on Other Baekhyun the next.  
  
  
  
“What are you looking at, Baekhyun?” A hand waves across his face and Baekhyun blinks, refocusing on the frown and creased eyebrows that Baekbeom is sporting. “Is there something in the corner?”  
  
  
  
“Nothing,” he says. Other Baekhyun raises his eyebrows at him. Baekhyun resists the urge to throw his glass in his direction. “I was just...spacing out.”  
  
  
  
“You’ve been looking there for the past few minutes, now,” Baekbeom says. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”  
  
  
  
“Yeah,” Baekhyun says, allowing a chuckle to escape his lips. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”  
  
  
  
“Okay then.”  
  
  
  
The talk resumes, and Baekhyun glances up one more time. Other Baekhyun is gone. He’s just about to sigh in relief when the cold drapes itself over his shoulders and weighs him down, a pair of lips just inches away from his ear:  
  
  
  
“Why don’t you introduce me to your family, Baekhyunnie?”  
  
  
  
He knocks his glass to the floor. Water splatters his shirt, and the shards glint up at him, and Baekhyun’s had enough. He’s had enough, and the feeling swells in his chest as he stands up.  
  
  
  
“Baekhyun -- what happened -- are you okay --”  
  
  
  
“I’m fine,” Baekhyun says. His hands are shaking. He still feels cold. “I’m fine.”  
  
  
  
“Baekhyun, come back --”  
  
  
  
But Baekhyun’s out of the room and running up the stairs, running down the corridors, running to his room -- running out of patience, and the proper frame of mind -- running out of fear. Anxiety’s grabbed ahold of him now. Anxiety, and the bright sparks of anger.  
  
  
  
He slams the door closed behind him, chest rising and falling as Other Baekhyun sits on the bed.  
  
  
  
“What exactly do you want from me?!”  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun watches him with dark eyes. It drives Baekhyun insane, that slow unraveling of his being within irises that are too familiar to him, and he wants to rip apart the distance between them. He wants to reach out and make this figure disappear.  
  
  
  
“An acknowledgment of my existence would be nice,” comes the tart reply. “It’s not fun being ignored in the corner, you know.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun seethes. “Do you even _exist_?” he bites out. “What are you? _Who_ are you? I’m the only one who can see you, and dammit, I sound insane! I’m probably only talking to myself!”  
  
  
  
“You’re not talking,” Other Baekhyun says. “You’re yelling.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun glares.  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun stands up. “So you want to know who I am, and why I’m here,” he says, taking a step forward. “You want to know why you’re the only one who can see me.” Baekhyun steps back. “You want to know what I want from you.” It’s a tango they’re dancing -- forward, backward. “You want to know if I’m real.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun’s run into a cabinet. Other Baekhyun’s right up in his space and they’re chest to chest, a strange kind of intensity flickering in the air they breathe. Baekhyun’s throat is dry.  
  
  
  
“Are you?” he whispers, trying to sound more sure than he feels.  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun wraps a hand around his wrist, and Baekhyun only just manages to hold down his shock at the contact. He’s brought over to the piano, Other Baekhyun removing the cover and then pulling him down to sit on the bench.  
  
  
  
“What are you doing?” Baekhyun asks. He receives no answer.  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun unlocks the cabinet nearby and takes out some music sheets -- these ones are new, Baekhyun notices. They don’t seem like they’re going to float down in confetti notes. He watches as Other Baekhyun places them on the stand, curious to know who the composer is, but there’s no title or name written across the top of the page. Instead he sees crossed out staff and forlorn G-clefs, abrupt rests and angry scrawls.  
  
  
  
When Other Baekhyun begins playing, nostalgia finds a crawlspace in Baekhyun’s heart and hides there. He’s heard this before, he knows. His memory of it is watery and uncertain, but it’s haunted the debris of his thoughts for some time, and he’s hardly ever able to forget any song he’s heard.  
  
  
  
Out in the open like this, though, it sounds several shades broken and erratic. It goes up and down the scales, unable to find direction. There is beauty lingering in segments, an intake of breath at a crescendo, semiquavers marching along toward the end. But Baekhyun can’t shake off the feeling of incompleteness hovering over the piece.  
  
  
  
“This,” Other Baekhyun says, pressing down the pedals and striking the last note, “is why I’m here.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun stays quiet.  
  
  
  
“Do you believe in multiple dimensions, Baekhyunnie? Alternate universes sewn into the fabric of time and space,” Other Baekhyun says, leaning back to look at him. “Endless lifetimes changing because of the nature of each decision you make. In this universe, a certain girl may fall in love with the boy next door and run off with him. In another universe, she is more conscious of her responsibilities, but ends up falling in love with a married man. And in yet another universe, she may not fall in love at all.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun fiddles with the hem of his shirt.  
  
  
  
“You asked me who I was,” Other Baekhyun continues. “I told you before, but I don’t think you believed me. I don’t think you will ever believe me, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” He reaches out and places a hand over Baekhyun’s. Baekhyun stills. For the first time, his touch is bordering on warm instead of cold. “I am your _what if_ , Baekhyun. In another universe, I am who you could have been. Maybe who you could still be.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun tries to wrap his head around that. His mind goes on a tilt-a-whirl. He gives up. “If you,” he says, struggling with how to word this, “If you really are who I am in another universe, then why are you here?”  
  
  
  
“Because I died.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun blinks. “But you said -- you said you weren’t a ghost --”  
  
  
  
“In here, I’m not.” Other Baekhyun shrugs. “In here, I’m still a possibility. I’m another part of you that you can still explore, that you can still become, and so I’m not a ghost. Not quite. If you’d only listen to your grandmother, then I can still be alive in this universe. I am still _you_ , after all, Baekhyunnie.”  
  
  
  
“Is that why you’re here?” Baekhyun says, tone rising with every syllable. “To manipulate me, so you can come alive again? To change my interests, scare me into pursuing music, _take over my life_ \--”  
  
  
  
“Be quiet,” Other Baekhyun snaps. By now Baekhyun’s perched on the other end of the bench, hand gripping the edges so he won’t fall off. “I’m not as evil as you’re making me out to be. I’m here because there was something I left unfinished, something I can’t ask anyone else but myself to do. You are technically myself, too.”  
  
  
  
He thrusts the music sheets in Baekhyun’s hands, and out of reflex, Baekhyun scrambles to catch them.  
  
  
  
“I was composing this until the day I died,” Other Baekhyun says. “As you no doubt heard, it’s still under construction. So many things are wrong with it. I can’t go on and just leave this unfinished. That’s why I need your help.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun swallows. “But I can’t compose.”  
  
  
  
“Yes, you can.”  
  
  
  
“I haven’t --”  
  
  
  
“You can play the piano,” Other Baekhyun says. “You understand music, even if you don’t remember the technicalities. You _can_ compose, you just haven’t tried.”  
  
  
  
“You’re really not here to take over my life?” Baekhyun asks, trying to read the expression crossing Other Baekhyun’s face.  
  
  
  
“I’m not asking you to choose music,” Other Baekhyun says, tone gentle this time. “I’m not here to force you into making a decision like that. I just want to finish my composition. Leaving it undone hinders me from moving on in my universe. Will you give me at least that, Baekhyunnie?”  
  
  
  
The doubts crash against his chest and suspicion’s injected into his veins. But he looks at his doppelganger, his other self, and sees only a plea. And somewhere beneath all that, Baekhyun finds a troubled soul.  
  
  
  
“I…” Baekhyun says, and gulps when Other Baekhyun gives him a look that feels a lot like hope, “I can try.”  
  
  
  
The smile he gets is brilliant. It’s filled with happiness, and Baekhyun thinks, _So this is what other people see in me._  
  
  
  
“Thank you,” Other Baekhyun breathes out. “ _Thank you_.”  
  
  
  
Moonlight streams through the window. In a blink of an eye, Other Baekhyun is gone.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
They begin slow and tentative, in the crackling hours between meals and family meetings. Baekhyun’s still fumbling. He tries to practice playing the same compositions he’d breezed past years ago, and finds himself lacking in so many ways. His other self then decides that it’s perhaps best to start schooling him in handling the musical instrument once again.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun often finds them both in tense situations, the atmosphere around them growing so thick that it’s almost suffocating. He makes the mistake of asking why Other Baekhyun had died in his universe, and then stares at empty space for a day and a half. In turn, Other Baekhyun asks him why he even wants to go into fashion when his sense of style seems to be lacking, because who in the world wears lilac pants with firetruck red shirts? Baekhyun ignores him for five hours before caving.  
  
  
  
He stands in the doorway sometimes, watching Other Baekhyun play the piano. It’s the piece he’s trying to finish over and over again. He starts out light and beautiful, hands careful as if he’s assisting a long-awaited birth. But frustration sets in, and soon his hands are slamming, pounding out the notes until all that comes out is a garbled symphony of what sounds like heartbreak. He stops then, head in his hands, and this is when Baekhyun walks over and redirects his attention to his own fledgling abilities.  
  
  
  
It’s strange, Baekhyun thinks, how similar they are and yet so different at the same time. Perhaps it stems from the fact that, in his universe, Other Baekhyun is older than he is. He’s got six years’ start on Baekhyun’s 19, and though there are moments when their personalities collide, his other self is still more reserved.  
  
  
  
“You’re doing well,” Other Baekhyun says when Baekhyun finishes playing another Chopin composition without messing up too much. “You seem to pick up things very fast. Much like me.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun just rolls his eyes. “I learned this years ago,” he says. “I just need to remember.”  
  
  
  
“Well, it still takes skill to pick up something you’ve lost.” His other self lets out a breath and then he begins to play the same piece, his spine stiffening with every measure. Shoulders just the tiniest bit hunched. Strands of hair falling across his eyes, but every press of the keys filled with conviction.  
  
  
  
When he finishes, Baekhyun is still fixated on Other Baekhyun’s fingers. They’re slender with tapering ends, and he wonders why he finds them so pretty when his are the same.  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun stretches out his hand to flip the music sheets. Before Baekhyun can stop himself, he blurts out, “Can I -- Can I hold your hand?”  
  
  
  
Silence falls into place. Then Other Baekhyun breaks it with a laugh that’s nothing short of boisterous, but the confliction in his eyes is clear. “Why?”  
  
  
  
“I…” Now that he thinks about it, Baekhyun feels silly. “I don’t…” He bites his lip. “It’s just -- I was thinking how we’re both the same and yet we’re different. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you. But I looked at your hands and I wondered how it would feel.”  
  
  
  
“The answer’s so easy, you don’t even need me around for it,” Other Baekhyun says. He chuckles. “Just hold your own hand.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun ducks his head.  
  
  
  
After a few seconds, he feels slender fingers intertwining with his. By now, the chill that comes with his other self’s touch has evaporated, his body temperature running more on _warm_ than on _freezing_. There is something almost comforting about it, the softness of skin against his own. It feels wrong, but Baekhyun just pushes those thoughts away, and concentrates on how this must be what it feels like for people to hold _his_ hand. He’s always been told that his hands are pretty, and now Baekhyun knows that’s true.  
  
  
  
He almost doesn’t want to let go. It’s scaring him, this curiosity that bubbles up over and out of the restraints he’s placed upon it, and he gives in to it too easily. But Other Baekhyun is unclasping their hands and he’s smiling at him, and Baekhyun tries not to miss the contact. He watches as Other Baekhyun pulls out the music sheets he’s abused a lot of times.  
  
  
  
“So,” Other Baekhyun says, giving him a tiny smile. “I thought it’s high time for us to work on this.” He seems to marshall himself, gathering up all the bits and pieces of patience he has, and he plays the piece. Like always, Baekhyun finds it too disjointed for his liking. Filled with emotion and yet heavily so.  
  
  
  
He doesn’t miss how his other self winces the moment he’s done, and he seems to be holding back his own distaste before it overwhelms him. Self-depreication’s only lovely when it’s folded up and hidden from sight.  
  
  
  
“What are you trying to convey?” Baekhyun asks, running his eyes over the notes on the sheets. “I can’t help you if you don’t know where you’re going.”  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I think it’s about life, and about the love that surrounds us, and everything else in between.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun blinks. “Well, that’s not so hard to translate into a song, is it?” he says in a wry tone of voice. Other Baekhyun smiles sheepishly. “I think the first problem here is that you have too many things to say -- too many things in your head, and taken apart they’re all beautiful. But when you put them together, they clash.”  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun hangs his head, and out of impulse, Baekhyun rubs soothing circles on his shoulders.  
  
  
  
“Let’s focus on just the important things, okay? Then we need to make transitions. I don’t think you know how to end this, and honestly I don’t either, but we can figure it out when most of it is done. Okay?”  
  
  
  
“Okay.” Other Baekhyun’s voice is soft, but he’s a little more determined than before.  
  
  
  
“Good,” Baekhyun says. “Now, why don’t we switch out these quarter notes…”  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
Progress is a fickle thing. Sometimes it comes in a flood, or in rare bursts. Most of the time, it seems so out of reach, always just a stone’s throw away but never quite near enough. They fall into a routine, both of them. There are occasional fights, and maybe words turn into brands that burn too much, but there is a certain harmony they’ve established. It’s shaky at best, but Baekhyun’s glad that the tension’s gone.  
  
  
  
He visits his grandmother again, and this time she looks wearier than before. Her bed’s an ocean now, the sheets rippling waves around her body, and her hair’s been let down. Baekhyun hasn’t talked to her in days, too busy with the outfits and then the musical piece. He feels a pang of guilt even as he sits down on the edge of the bed.  
  
  
  
“Hello, Baekhyunnie,” his grandmother says. “Your parents tell me that you’ve been playing the piano a lot lately.” Even through the lines of exhaustion etched into her skin, he finds the fleeting signs of happiness.  
  
  
  
“Yes,” he says, “I took your advice.”  
  
  
  
“This is why one must always listen to his or her elders,” she quips.  
  
  
  
“Grandma?”  
  
  
  
“Yes?”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun gathers up this thoughts. They always fall through a sieve and he ends up with a blank mind, unable to voice out what he needs to say. “Why is it that it’s so important for there to be a musician?”  
  
  
  
His grandmother tilts her head. “What do you mean, Baekhyunnie?”  
  
  
  
He takes a deep breath. “It’s just...Mother told me that you always said it was important to have one in the family. To keep up traditions. But I was wondering if it’s more than that.”  
  
  
  
“You know,” his grandmother muses, fiddling with how the sheets are arranged over her lower body, “I was seven years old when my father taught me how to play the violin. He was a good man, even if being a musician in those days didn’t bring a lot of food to the table.” She looks down, and Baekhyun scoots closer, realizing that this is a story he’s never heard. “But he always loved me, and took care of me, and always we’d bond over playing the violin.”  
  
  
  
She seems to catch herself then, and she looks up at the violin that’s displayed on her wall. “He came from a long line of musicians. I was proud of that heritage, even if he and my mother weren’t always able to buy me the things I wanted. One day, he died.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun holds her hand. His head is spinning -- the world, he finds, isn’t as black and white and gray as it seems.  
  
  
  
“I didn’t -- He was playing in some jazz bar, the pay was good. But a brawl broke out. My father’s always been a good man, and he’d tried to break up the fight, tried to fix something he hadn’t even broken. He was shot. I --” Her lip quivers. Baekhyun feels a gust of cold settling over him, replaced by a creeping kind of warmth, and the bed dips. “I just wanted to keep a memory of my father,” she whispers. “To let him live on, in a way, and I guess I want to live on too. I’m sorry if I put too much pressure on you. It’s just -- you loved music so much, and I didn’t want you to let go of it completely. You understand, don’t you?”  
  
  
  
A hand settles on his shoulder. Baekhyun knows without turning that his other self is here as well. “I do,” he says softly. “But you’ve got a long time yet, grandmother.”  
  
  
  
“Sometimes I wonder,” she says. This is the frailest, smallest he’s ever seen her. “I have dreams, sometimes, of my husband talking to me. He told me he’d wait. I have no doubt that he would -- that he will.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun’s grip on her hand tightens. It frightens him, the way acceptance eclipses determination in her eyes, and he’s always known it’s inevitable. He’s known it since that moment in the car when his mother had told him they were going to his grandmother’s house.  
  
  
  
Death is a black hole that sucks in anyone brushing past, and it’s never really cared about the ones who are left behind. He thinks of a guy not much older than he is, the haunted look in his eyes whenever Baekhyun asks him why he’d died, the desperation braided into his spine as he tried to finish his composition. It makes him wonder what the other Baekhyuns are like, what paths they’ve taken.  
  
  
  
Do they die the same way?  
  
  
  
“You’ll be okay,” he says, though it sounds more like he’s saying to himself than to her. “We’ll still be able to play a duet.”  
  
  
  
She laughs. “Keep improving your skills, young man, if that’s something you want to accomplish.”  
  
  
  
“Yes, Ma’am.” He mock-salutes her and she shakes her head at him.  
  
  
  
“Go on, then,” she says. “I need to rest for that future duet of ours.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun gives her hand one more squeeze then stands, conscious of the other presence following his movements. “Be well,” he says.  
  
  
  
“Don’t worry about me,” she snorts and pats the mattress. “This isn’t a war zone. Tell Baekbeom to visit me as well, okay? I’d like to talk to my eldest grandson, too.”  
  
  
  
“Okay,” Baekhyun says. “Good night, grandmother.”  
  
  
  
“It’s only afternoon,” she quips, but lies down all the same.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun walks out of the room, letting Other Baekhyun go ahead of him. It’s silent up until they reach his room and sit on the bench, except Other Baekhyun doesn’t pull out the music sheets right away. Instead he’s thoughtful, accompanying Baekhyun’s Hanon exercises with an idle right hand. Something drifts between them but Baekhyun doesn’t want to be the first to call attention to it.  
  
  
  
“I thought I had time.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun stops. He watches the way their hands are close to each other, the similarities, the tiny differences -- the small scar on his index finger because of a pair of scissors, the unmarred skin of his other self’s palms. He waits. More than that, he listens.  
  
  
  
“Life’s like that. It tricks you into believing you’ve got all of the chances in the world. That even if you fail, don’t worry, you’ll be able to make up for it sometime in the future.” Other Baekhyun exhales. The air unwinds into something like frustration, and the slightest tinge of regret. “I took things for granted. In my universe, I was a genius, a prodigy, and I locked myself up in my room to keep practicing.  
  
  
  
“And then I became so immersed in this recital. I’d started on my composition by then; I was planning to perform it. I pushed away everyone who came near. I didn’t talk to anyone at all, and most days, all I did was run through _staccato_ and _decrescendo_ and _andante_. Moderately slowly.” He chuckles, but it comes out dark and brooding.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun looks at him then, wonders how he’s been so blinded by appearances that he’s forgotten this boy is still not really him. Another kind of Baekhyun, possibly, but not who he is in this lifetime. _A possibility_ , he remembers him saying. _I’m a part of you_.  
  
  
  
“How?”  
  
  
  
It is murmured. Other Baekhyun can pretend to not have heard it. To throw it away, that one question, and let it shrivel in some corner where it won’t ever need an answer. But he just looks back at him, and for some reason, Baekhyun’s off balance. He isn’t _en pointe_ at the barre, anymore, not in this strange relationship they have; he hasn’t been for some time now.  
  
  
  
This time, when he looks into his other self’s eyes, he sees a reflection of himself. But then he digs, deeper and deeper until there’s nowhere else to go, and in that moment, Baekhyun sees something more. It twinkles at him. Maybe out of reach, but definitely not out of sight.  
  
  
  
“I cared for nothing, as usual,” Other Baekhyun says. His cheek is frozen moonlight. His eyes are broken glass bottles. “I just wanted to go home and finish my composition. So I wasn’t watching where I was going, and it was winter and snow had just fallen, and a car slipped on the ice. I remember thinking, _My hands_.” He shakes his head. “But then I thought of how I was the eldest son, and my composition would never be finished, and my parents were asking me what time I’d be coming home before I got hit. I thought of my younger brother asking for my help -- of the cup of coffee my mother always put out for me while I worked -- of my father taking me to concerts -- of my grandmother teaching me how to play --”  
  
  
  
He doesn’t know when it happens. One second he’s looking at the tears that cling to his other self’s lashes -- his eyes are so _pretty_ \-- and then the next, he’s holding him in his embrace. There is no cold now, no fingers of frost. Only warmth, bright and white-hot and palpable, licking every inch of skin where they touch. He slips his fingers through Other Baekhyun’s hair and listens to him cry, and he wishes everything would turn out okay. For himself. For his grandmother.  
  
  
  
For the beautiful boy in his arms, a life now reduced to a possibility in another dimension, another time.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

  
  
Something shifts between them after that incident. This time, when their legs brush and Baekhyun’s hand curls too close around Other Baekhyun’s nape, it feels only one part awkward and three parts intimate. He catches himself sometimes, drinking in his companion’s jawline and the wing-flutter of his eyelashes dusting cheekbones. He finds him beautiful. But then Baekhyun turns pink all over and wants to slap himself, because in theory, isn’t he finding _himself_ beautiful?

 

 

It’s still strange, how Other Baekhyun hangs around him all the time. Once or twice, Baekhyun’s family has to pry him back to the real world when his gaze lingers a minute longer on the grin cresting Other Baekhyun’s lips. His mother takes him aside one day and asks him if there’s anything wrong.

 

 

“I heard you talking to someone,” she says, biting her lip. “Is everything okay, Baekhyun?”

 

 

And Baekhyun wonders how insane it is, the fact that he’s growing so attached to someone that his family can’t even _see_ , someone who’s simultaneously everything that Baekhyun is and everything that he’s not. A strange feeling tugs on him then. What would it be like, living in Other Baekhyun’s world? Not that Baekhyun doesn’t like his own life. It’s just that he’s curious, and he wants to know what kind of person he is and what he does in that life.

 

 

When the two of them are together, him and his other self, it’s a little bit like something’s off. As if, in the minutes they waste on _vivace_ s, the world’s slipped further down its axis. Baekhyun feels lighter when he’s with Other Baekhyun, but he’s noticed other things, too: The odd warbling of his voice at times, causing Other Baekhyun to look at him with concern; the way his bones feel too empty and his veins too brittle, skin struggling to fill the spaces; the architecture of his life, passing through sieves of memories and falling through the fine cracks down the streets.

 

 

He clings to the vibrancy of his other self, the loudness of his voice, the brightness of his laughter. He latches onto it and _sucks_ it in like a parasite might. He tries to find comfort in the mirth buried in Other Baekhyun’s lips, the brilliance imprinted onto his fingertips, the quiet reservation dozing off in the crook of his elbow.

 

 

It happens just past midnight, their twin laughs racing from one end of the room and back. For a fleeting second, Baekhyun buries his face in Other Baekhyun’s neck, not quite sure what prompts the action. He smells of lilacs and spring showers. Baekhyun breathes it in, fingers dipping through the cracks between buttonholes, not quite registering the hands clenching in the back of his jacket. He lifts his head up and sees his face within the darkened eyes of a face that’s much like his, and he laughs because everything is just _so fucking stupid_.

 

 

Pretty pink lips widen and part, revealing rows of small teeth. And Baekhyun’s out of his mind, he’s drunk on something he’s never even known he’s wanted, and he bridges the miniscule distance and leans in --

 

 

He feels like he’s being slammed into a wall, chest caving in on itself. His thoughts spiral upward. Baekhyun’s disoriented and lost.

 

 

He’s standing in the middle of a performance hall, the same one from his dreams, but this time it feels more real than it ever has. The curtains are lifted. Hundreds of people are seated in front of the stage and they don’t even notice him, their gazes focused on the center of the stage.

 

 

Other Baekhyun is sitting in front of a grand piano, hands poised to play. The melody comes soft and flowing. Then it washes over him, crashes straight through his walls and brings them all down. Baekhyun can’t move. His nerves are numb with disbelief. He listens as applause rocks the hall, whistles straight past his hearing.

 

 

He runs to Other Baekhyun when he disappears into the backstage, and he attempts to grab him. But he doesn’t even come close to touching him -- his fingers swipe through flesh and bone, and Baekhyun stares at his hands. For the first time, he feels so small and helpless.

 

 

“Baekhyun!” he screams, and panics at how distant he sounds. “Baekhyun! Baekhyun, look at me! Baekhyun, why am I here, what did I do? Please help me. Baekhyun, Baekhyun, Baekhyun!”

 

 

“ _Baekhyunnie!_ ”

 

 

Baekhyun blinks. The world comes back in swatches of soft focus and bokehs, and it’s with a jolt that he realizes he’s still holding Other Baekhyun’s face in his hands. They’re nose to nose, and his other self’s lips look bitten red and kiss-swollen, and something like fondness breaks through the alarm in his eyes.

 

 

“What happened?” Baekhyun asks, shaking. “I don’t -- I saw you in a performance hall playing in front of an audience, and then you walked away and I couldn’t grab hold of you, and I screamed your name but _you couldn’t hear_.” He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t, and he hates it.

 

 

“I don’t know,” Other Baekhyun says, and he’s just as scared. He clenches his jaw. “But it means we need to hurry up and finish this. I’ve taken far too long here. I have to move on.”

 

 

He unwinds his arms from around Baekhyun’s waist and pulls away, and he refocuses on the music sheets. Baekhyun misses the blazing warmth. But he doesn’t say anything, pouring his heart instead on ivory and black, and tries to ignore the fear he’d felt at becoming something insubstantial and unseen.

 

 

He wonders if that’s what Other Baekhyun had felt when the dreams were just beginning.

 

 

÷

  
  
  
  
There is an urgency to the way they work now. Baekhyun tries to ignore the electricity sparking off of them, concentrating instead on jotting down stems and bars. It’s impossible though, especially when Other Baekhyun’s heat engulfs him entirely, and Baekhyun just wants to pull him in.  
  
  
  
It’s twisted. He knows this, has played cat’s cradle with the strings that bind them together, and now all he has is a tangled mess. He doesn’t know how to fix this. He doesn’t think he wants to.  
  
  
  
They work well into the night, voices turning hoarse whenever there’s a disagreement over whether a crescendo is really necessary, and sometimes his chest aches. Sometimes he wants to swallow Other Baekhyun’s frantic yelling with kisses that pull out more air than words, and he can see it in the boy’s face, too. But ever since Baekhyun had gotten a glimpse of his other self’s world, Other Baekhyun had been antsy, growing more and more desperating. _Hurry up_ is a perpetual command hanging from his lips.  
  
  
  
The tension is back, now. It’s even worse than before. Baekhyun can’t take it, and so he slams down the piano lid in the middle of composing the ending segment.  
  
  
  
“What are you doing?!”  
  
  
  
“What’s going on?” Baekhyun asks. “There’s something going on.”  
  
  
  
“We don’t have time for this,” Other Baekhyun seethes. “We have to hurry up and finish this piece!”  
  
  
  
It stings how, even after his confession that one night, the most important thing to his other self is still the musical composition. “What, so you can get rid of me? So you can _leave_?”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun recognizes the defiant set of his other self’s jaw, has seen him wear that same brand of rebellion in his own eyes several times. “And what if I said yes?”  
  
  
  
He pushes off of the bench and breaks into a run, the anger suddenly spilling through every pore in his body and out of his chest. His heart swells. Tears sting his eyes.  
  
  
  
But then his back’s against the wall and there’s a familiar weight pressing him down, and heat envelops him. It’s wrong, Baekhyun thinks weakly, how his hand presses Other Baekhyun closer. As they kiss, he wonders if this is how he tastes -- minty and sweet, lips almost too soft. He feels a thigh slot in the space between his legs and a moan escapes him, and soon he’s seeking Other Baekhyun’s neck, wondering why it’s so attractive. Collarbones peek up at him. Have they always been that sharp?  
  
  
  
Soon his other self is tearing away and pushing his chin up with delicate fingers, breaths coming out fast. “I can’t leave,” he says, “not anymore. I _don’t_ want to leave you.”  
  
  
  
“Then don’t,” Baekhyun says in a daze. Other Baekhyun is wrecked, and he wonders if they look exactly the same, or if they’re both broken in different ways. “Don’t leave me.”  
  
  
  
“I have to,” Other Baekhyun whispers against the bruises on Baekhyun’s neck. A shiver runs through him. “I told you once that I was a possibility, Baekhyun. That I was -- am -- a part of you. But if you make the same decisions, if you choose to pursue music, I become more than a possibility. I become _you_. And you will become me. You will have to take my place in my world, where I am already _dead_.”  
  
  
  
“What are you saying?” Baekhyun asks, running a thumb over his other self’s lower lip. “Aren’t we the same?”  
  
  
  
“We’re not,” Other Baekhyun says. “You know we’re not. We may look the same, have the same name, but we are still fundamentally different. I’m older than you are, don’t forget. We have different personalities. Only one Baekhyun can exist in any world, Baekhyunnie, and I’ve been here for too long. I’m starting to take over your world, and that means you will have to take over mine.”  
  
  
  
“How is that so bad?” Baekhyun whispers.  
  
  
  
“Because you’ll be dead in my place,” Other Baekhyun says, and he sounds desperate now. “And because when we first met, I told you I didn’t come here to manipulate you into being _me_ so I can live again. I said I wasn’t as evil as you were making me out to be. I still am not.”  
  
  
  
Pain is holding onto the last rungs of his rib cage. It’s only a matter of time before he makes it to his heart.  
  
  
  
“We don’t have much time left.” The breath that Other Baekhyun releases in his ear is hot.  
  
  
  
Without a word, he begins to unbutton Other Baekhyun’s shirt in earnest, trying not to think of fractured moans in a voice he’s heard every waking moment of his life, of bodies coming apart despite being essentially the same, of how he screams out his own name into the night air.  
  
  
  
It’s a fairytale headed right down the wrong train tracks, and all Baekhyun knows is that there will be no happy ending.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
It’s raining when they shade in the double bar line at the eighth page of the piece. Baekhyun’s sitting in between Other Baekhyun’s legs, and he thinks their ankles are tangled together. Other Baekhyun’s right arm rests loosely around his waist, hand searing on his thigh, his chin resting on the dip between Baekhyun’s neck and shoulder. For a moment they sit there in disbelief, and then Baekhyun’s pushing down a sudden wave of anxiety.  
  
  
  
“Congrats,” he says, turning his head to face his other self, stomach churning with something unpleasant. “We did it!”  
  
  
  
“We did,” Other Baekhyun echoes, eyes blank and unreadable. He seems to search Baekhyun’s face, before he drops down and presses a kiss against his neck. Baekhyun shivers. Outside, he can see the drops rolling down the window pane, and he can see the trees swaying.  
  
  
  
“Yes, so why don’t we --”  
  
  
  
“Baekhyunnie,” Other Baekhyun interrupts, and for the first time, Baekhyun feels the gap between them. He sees the years etched in the depths of his other self’s eyes. He sees maturity, and wisdom, and all of the things he has yet to learn. “You know what this means, don’t you?”  
  
  
  
“There’s still time,” he says, working to keep his tone light. “Come on, let’s play the piece together.”  
  
  
  
“Baekhyunnie.”  
  
  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t want to cry. In fact, he doesn’t want to do anything but keep the smile from crumbling off his face, giving way to a sadness that Baekhyun never wants to feel.  
  
  
  
“Baekhyunnie, I have to go.”  
  
  
  
Their breaths come in semi-inhalations and unspoken words. Baekhyun turns his head and listens to the heart thumping away in Other Baekhyun’s chest, trying not to fixate on how his warmth is dissipating. His hand balls up the hem of his other self’s shirt.  
  
  
  
“Don’t go.”  
  
  
  
“I need to, and you know that. I need to move on.” It’s getting colder now, the frost skittering across Baekhyun’s skin and settling deep in the crevices where he can’t get it out. Other Baekhyun’s hand comes up to ruffle his hair. The touch feels so light.  
  
  
  
“Stay,” Baekhyun says, and he doesn’t need a mirror to tell him that the liquid running down his cheeks is a tear. “ _Please_.”  
  
  
  
“Sorry, Baekhyunnie.” He feels the slightest pressure on his head, a feather kiss that drifts and is blown away. He barely feels it now. Other Baekhyun is less solid beneath him, less _there_ , and it scares him. Still he’s holding on even if it feels a lot like he’s only holding a passing breeze.  
  
  
  
“Don’t,” Baekhyun whispers. “Don’t leave me with _sorry_.”  
  
  
  
He’s losing him. He’s losing him, he knows, because the next time Other Baekhyun speaks, the quality is garbled and distant and faint. Baekhyun shuts his eyes, but even in his mind he can see his other self growing more and more transparent, a blob of 8-bit pixels blending into gray and brown.  
  
  
  
“Thank you, then. Thank you for helping me.”  
  
  
  
He feels as though he’s wrapped in ice and he’s far, far too easy to break. Ice melts. Baekhyun’s not ice, but it feels like he’s been torn from heat and made to live in frigid conditions.  
  
  
  
“Don’t leave me,” he whispers. It travels, shattered, and finds no destination.  
  
  
  
_Be well, Baekhyunnie._  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
It’s only when Other Baekhyun is gone that Baekhyun realizes how much his family has been neglected. Guilt rushes through him and he tries to catch up to dinner conversations, and he visits his grandmother in her room every other day. Baekhyun pretends she’s okay and fine and strong because the steel in her eyes tells him to do so. But when he sits at the piano and plays whatever piece it is that she requests, he can see her shoulders slump forward when she thinks he’s not looking.  
  
  
  
He tries to push down the feeling that there’s something missing. A rip in his identity, wide open with serrated edges, and Baekhyun wonders how one even heals somethiing that’s never been there. Somethimes he wakes up in his bed and stares at the ceiling, wondering if he’d simply succumbed to stress and pressure and imagined everything. Was Other Baekhyun real? Were the things he told him real? He doesn’t know. He’s caught up in waterlogged images and underdeveloped negatives, unable to tell the difference between fact and fiction.  
  
  
  
An envelope addressed to Baekhyun arrives a week after Other Baekhyun’s vanished the same way he’d appeared. It’s from the university, and it contains tickets for the fashion show they’re holding. Baekhyun sees his name amongst the featured designers and he remembers the outfits he’d made. It feels like three lifetimes ago, lost in the haze of everything that’s happened to him in the past few weeks. He turns the pair of tickets over and over in his hands. What would Other Baekhyun say?  
  
  
  
Then he remembers something and he rushes back to his room, depositing the envelope on his desk before skimming through the music sheets in the cabinets. He wonders if it’s still here, if it _exists_ \--  
  
  
  
He finds the completed composition at the bottom of the stack. The two of them had rewritten it on clean sheets of paper, each dot and slant precise. His hands tremble as he lifts the piano lid and sets down the sheets.  
  
  
  
When he begins playing, the melody takes him to a sea of shadows. Each note is a silhouette growing out of the darkness, creeping closer with hands around his neck. And Baekhyun can’t breathe -- his hands are still playing but his oxygen’s gone -- and his heart swells and aches and ruptures all at once.  
  
  
  
The last thing he thinks of is a brilliant smile that wards off all the bad things in his head.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
_He doesn’t know where he is, but he knows what it’s supposed to be. There are walls rising all aroud him, and short paths cutting through them in random twists and turns. This time, he knows what he’s looking for, and he doesn’t hesitate to search for it.  
  
  
  
Impatience congeals in his gut and his eyes are crossing. He’s gone down endless corridors with dead-ends , and forks in the road that lead to more forks, and his legs feel sore. He knows from the melody slicing the air into ribbons of silence that he’s here. He’s here, and Baekhyun doesn’t want him to wait so long. He quickens his pace.  
  
  
  
It’s when he turns right into a rather short alley that he sees him, leaning against the wall and staring at him with an impassive face. This is when he admits that he’s missed his warmth and his comforting weight when he leans his chin on his shoulder. He steps forward, joy tumbling from his lips, and he’s just about to gather him in his arms -- to have him _ so close _once again.  
  
  
  
But everything’s upside down, gone askew and awry and all wrong, and his heart’s a pebble sinking to the lowest trench when all he holds in his palms is the increasingly familiar cold.  
  
  
He’s been walking through a long maze in between visions of his other self, and always it feels like he’ll touch warm flesh again, but his hand keeps passing through thin air.  
  
  
  
It’s the blank gaze hurts the most. _  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
Sunday morning is condensed into blooming lilies in the garden and a sweet summer breeze. It’s been three months since they’d first arrived at his grandmother’s house. All the windows are open, now, sunlight dripping into every hidden corner of the house. Happiness is a foreign scent.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t want to feel bitter but he does, sitting here on the edge of his grandmother’s bed and pressing a kiss to her vein-riddled hand. She’d died in her sleep last night, and he still wishes he’d been able to sing her a lullaby before she’d gone.  
  
  
  
They discuss dresses and arrangements and the will. Baekbeom is stepping up to his role as the eldest brother, helping their father call the undertaker. His mother is crying, tears perched on her eyelashes and rolling down her cheeks.  
  
  
  
_I hope you play the death march during my funeral._  
  
  
  
He closes his eyes. There is still something he can do.  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
Funerals are when life tapestries come to an end. All the colors have come together, then -- the red of mistakes, the blue of sadness, the green of success. Sometimes disjointed vignettes crowd the canvas, or the stitching is bad, or the hue is wrong. But life is hardly ever clean-cut and _right_ , and there are instances when the most honest (most tattered) tapestries are also the most beautiful.  
  
  
  
Baekhyun’s eyes are swollen. It’s five in the afternoon and the sun’s headed for home, but he kisses the red rose in his hand and throws it down to where his grandmother’s coffin is being lowered. He chokes on his sadness.  
  
  
  
_Flames. Music sheets and scribbled notes and candle wax drying on wooden surfaces. Paper confetti. A wretched man hunched over the desk, and a melody playing softly in the background._  
  
  
  
He lurches forward, and only just manages to clutch his brother’s arm for support. Baekbeom eyes him with worry. Baekhyun’s head spin, attempts to go through a hundred revolutions.  
  
  
  
_Thundering applause. Curtains crashing down. Spotlights hot on his nape and piano singing beneath his fingertips. The floor is polished to a flawless gleam._  
  
  
  
“Are you okay?” Baekbeom asks.  
  
  
  
_Salt leaking onto his tongue and water marking his skin. The sea is possessive, pulling him under until all he sees are endless depths. When he swims back for air, there is a figure on the beach, covered in sand from head to toe._  
  
  
  
He nods his head. The motion makes the earth tilt faster.  
  
  
  
_Twin reflections in the mirror. Twin laughters. The yellow feather limping in the air, and clouds of dust rising from unopened boxes. There is a photo album in one of them._  
  
  
  
Something seems to tug at him, the pull stronger now. Baekbeom digs a warning into his wrist.  
  
  
  
_Slender fingers coaxing desire out of his skin, and attraction sparking electric in his throat. Kiss-littered neck. Tousled hair and galaxy-strewn eyes. Love is breathed against the seam of his lips._  
  
  
  
Baekhyun clutches his chest. His body is burning. His mind’s taken a crash course down oblivion.  
  
  
  
_Be well, Baekhyunnie._  
  
  
  
He whirls around and there, right behind him, Other Baekhyun stands. He looks so tangible right now, and when Baekhyun reaches out his hand meets solid flesh. The cacophony in his head crescendos and he cannot find the appropriate amount of air to breathe.  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun holds out his own hand. Slim fingers with tapering ends, palm up and open and inviting. It hovers between them, and all of a sudden, silence takes over his thoughts.  
  
  
  
_It’s a Sunday morning. They’re sitting by a pond, legs submerged in the water. Everything’s too alive._  
  
  
  
“Baekhyun?” Baekbeom calls, hand clamping down his arm. “Baekhyun, they’re throwing in the dirt.”  
  
  
  
He can’t tear himself away from his other self’s firm hold.  
  
  
  
“Baekhyun, what are you looking at?”  
  
  
  
Other Baekhyun cups his face in his hands. He doesn’t kiss him, but he comes dangerously close. And when their gazes run parallel, Baekhyun knows that whatever he will say, he will believe him. Whatever he will ask from him, he will give.  
  
  
  
“Baekhyunnie,” he breathes out.  
  
  
  
Everything else is far away now: His mother’s sobbing, his father’s shaking his shoulders, and Baekbeom’s yelling in his ear. His grandmother’s being buried, and he’d played her favorite song for her earlier. It’s time, he thinks, for him to let go.  
  
  
  
“Yes?” he whispers.  
  
  
  
“Run away with me.”  
  
  
  


÷

  
  
  
  
Inside a certain room in Baekhyun’s grandmother’s house, there is a maid cleaning. She finds a set of keys sitting on top of a locked cabinet and she opens it, just in case it needs a good dusting, and wonders how many cobwebs there must be inside.  
  
  
  
It’s empty.  
  
  
  
She shrugs her shoulders. Who is she to question why the rich keep their empty cabinets locked?  
  
  


÷

  
  



End file.
